Suit Says Brothers Are Victims of California’s War on the Medfly

When the state declared war on the Mediterranean fruit fly and called for an army of workers to reinforce the front lines of Southern California’s back yards, the four Adkins brothers joined up.

Three years later, they say they are still suffering the battle scars: violent headaches, nausea, itchy rashes, respiratory problems, dizziness, loss of memory and cramps.

Now, the Adkins brothers--Andre, Dante, Domingo and Dreco--are declaring a war of their own, this time in Los Angeles Superior Court, where they are suing the state of California for exposing them to a fly-trapping chemical without revealing its dangers.

The pesticide malathion enraged the public when state helicopters saturated the Los Angeles Basin with it during the 1989-90 infestation, giving rise to hundreds of lawsuits. Oddly, it is the lesser-known chemical trimedlar--a widely used Medfly bait resembling a piece of bubble gum--that is central to one of the first cases to come to trial as a result of California’s war against the fly.

The Adkinses charge that they were given one day’s training and sent without protective gear to bait traps with trimedlar, then set them in trees that had been sprayed with malathion the night before. The brothers say the sweet, sickly smell of the bait permeated state-provided cars as the workers drove for hours around the county. Workers handled the chemical with their bare hands and reached into freshly sprayed trees, the brothers said.

“The state should never have allowed this stuff to be used without protective gear. How much does it cost to buy some gloves and a pair of goggles?” asked Calabasas attorney Stanley Mann, who represents the Adkinses in the case that goes to trial Wednesday.

State officials deny that trimedlar--a sex lure used to attract male flies and help agriculture officials measure the size of an infestation--had anything to do with the brothers’ illnesses. Hundreds of workers were exposed and no others have come forward to complain, they said.

“No one else in the history of trimedlar has had this reaction,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Charles Getz, who is defending the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “This is not a poison. This is a sexual attractant not known to have any toxic properties.”

Even if injury did result, the state was frantically fighting the crop-devastating fly, and governments cannot be held liable for actions taken in a state of emergency, Getz said.

“Buildings were dynamited after the 1906 earthquake and people trapped inside were no doubt killed. But in a state of emergency--whether earthquake, fire or Medfly--the state has absolute immunity from damage claims,” he said

Instructions printed by trimedlar manufacturers state that the product’s toxicological effects have not been studied. “Use with appropriate caution,” the packet warns. A data sheet that demonstrates the use of the product depicts a worker wearing gloves.

But the Adkins brothers say the Department of Food and Agriculture ignored their complaints of illness and requests for gloves, even telling them that anyone caught wearing protective gear would be dismissed.

Mann argues that the state prohibited the use of gloves--routinely used by workers elsewhere who handle trimedlar--to avoid raising fears among people who were upset about malathion spraying.

“It was a hot political issue,” Mann said. “If people had known the (bait) . . . was worse than the malathion itself, all hell would have broken loose.”

As the weeks went by the symptoms worsened; the Adkinses say they lost their appetites and felt exhausted. Andre Adkins said he was hospitalized eight times and lost 70 pounds. Dante Adkins rubbed his eye after handling the bait and wound up in a hospital emergency room.

When they told an agriculture supervisor of their symptoms he “laughed and suggested we were all having sex with the same woman,” Dante Adkins said.

Domingo Adkins complained to county health officials and a television news station; he was fired. Two of the other brothers were fired, although they and the state disagree as to the reasons, and the fourth was laid off.

Two toxicological and neurological experts who put the Adkinses through extensive tests are prepared to testify that trimedlar damaged their nervous systems, immune systems and brains, causing symptoms that do not cease with exposure to the product, Mann said.

“We’ve ruled out all the standard known possibilities that would cause this kind of reaction in human beings,” Dr. Marshall Handleman said in a recent interview.

The state has lined up experts who are ready to attest that trimedlar is not the culprit. Getz said the brothers ignored training procedures that instructed them to use the foil wrapper to keep from touching the lure. The state cannot be held responsible for workers’ carelessness, the attorney said.

Getz said: “If you rub table salt in your eye it is going to do damage. So do you wear gloves when you handle table salt?”