Suit Over Power Lines Comes to Trial : Law: Three San Clemente couples cite cancer fears and allege that utility’s wires have driven their property values down.

Mark and Cheryl McCartin’s search for their dream home ended in 1989 when the couple paid $730,000 for a five-bedroom house on a bluff-top overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

It was in this tony Mariner’s Point neighborhood where they planned to raise their four children, ranging in age from 2 to 6.

But mere months after they moved in, workers with the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. added four more high-voltage power lines to the seven already running alongside their back yard. The McCartins and a few neighbors sued, claiming that electromagnetic fields emitted from the power lines caused their property values to plummet.

On Monday, a trial of the McCartins’ civil lawsuit began in Orange County Superior Court in Fullerton, with both sides proclaiming that a decision in favor of the homeowners could have significant effects on the electric utility industry nationwide.

Mark McCartin, an emergency room physician with Kaiser Permanente, said he and the five other homeowners are not interested in large financial settlements. They simply want the utility company to move the lines, because they fear that the electromagnetic fields generated by the power lines can cause cancer.

But officials with San Diego Gas & Electric say the homeowners’ concerns are unfounded. “People like the McCartins are probably sincere, but misinformed,” said Greg Barnes, a staff lawyer for the utility company.

Barnes and officials with the utility company say the electric current that runs through the lines in the San Clemente neighborhood carries the same voltage “that runs down every neighborhood street.” They also say that dozens of scientific organizations across the globe--including the Geneva-based World Health Organization and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency--have found no link between cancer and electromagnetic fields, known as EMFs.

On Monday, it was reported that a new study by Yale physicist Robert Adair concluded that the EMFs generated by electric power lines are far too weak to affect human cells and pose no health risk.

The study, to be published in the April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, takes issue with the theory that power lines were responsible for slightly higher occurrences of cancer and leukemia among some people living near them.

Barnes and utility company officials have suggested that the McCartins’ lawsuit has been effectively instigated by a “well-organized consortium of lawyers” headed by Seattle lawyer Michael Withey “who are trying to organize a mass litigation campaign using the scare of EMFs.”

But Withey, who represents the McCartins, hotly denies this, and has even asked Judge James R. Ross, who is presiding over the jury trial, to order the utility company’s lawyers not to repeat such suggestions before the jury. “It’s easy to blame attorneys. It’s the mothers and fathers of America, people like Dr. McCartin, who are doing this to protect their children.”

In his motion to the court, Withey said “such derogatory statements are improper and are not relevant to the case.”

Withey was responsible almost four years ago for getting the Boeing Co. to pay $500,000 to a former employee who claimed that his leukemia was caused by exposure to EMFs at a company facility. Since then, Withey has filed several EMF lawsuits across the nation.

In a San Diego case that attracted national publicity last May, Withey unsuccessfully argued that a 5-year-old San Diego girl had contracted a rare form of cancer from EMFs generated by power lines that ran over her home. That case was also against the San Diego Gas & Electric Co.

Referring to plaintiffs’ attorneys involved in similar litigation across the country, Barnes said “these lawyers are hoping to make this (McCartin lawsuit) their flagship case. They are going all out to win it, so the floodgates of ‘property value cases’ against utility companies will open.”

McCartin and his neighbors dispute the utility’s view of how the lawsuit came about.

McCartin said they sought out Withey after finding that the EMF levels in his children’s rooms were more than 10 times higher than the level deemed safe by some people.

The McCartins crammed their four children in a bedroom farthest from the power lines and later asked other homeowners to join a neighborhood campaign to remove the lines.

Many of his neighbors were equally jittery, McCartin said.

One couple, Jean and Martin Covalt, have since abandoned their $1.5-million estate overlooking a canyon above north Camp Pendleton. The Covalts were unable to sell their home--which includes a tennis court, swimming pool, and citrus and avocado orchards--even after slashing the price by $750,000. They have hired Withey to handle a separate lawsuit against the San Diego Gas & Electric Co.

Another couple, David and Sandra Lammert, who agreed to join the McCartin lawsuit, said they are consumed daily by fear.

“I have young grandchildren who visit me often,” said David Lammert, who paid $383,000 for his house in 1988. “I worry when they come over. I don’t want them to get sick.”

The homeowners said they asked the utility company to relocate the lines in nearby Camp Pendleton. They were told they would have to pay for the relocation, which would have cost an estimated $2.5 million, McCartin said.

McCartin said that if the homeowners do not prevail in their legal action, they, too, would abandon their houses--if they cannot find buyers.

“We’re scared the kids would come down with cancer,” McCartin said. “We couldn’t live with ourselves if we worried about our property values and one of our kids came down with cancer.”

Withey said he was confident that the homeowners would win.

“You don’t have to wait and count all the grave sites before we take measures to protect children,” Withey said. “That is the key issue in this case.