{"id":9673,"date":"2013-01-16T01:28:38","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T08:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=9673"},"modified":"2017-03-16T01:36:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T08:36:45","slug":"radiation-refugee-files-120-million-suit-vs-calif-sdge-from-w-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=9673","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Radiation Refugee\u2019 Files $120 Million Suit vs. Calif., SDG&E from W. Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Professional musician claims wireless smart meter health effects forced her to flee San Diego home.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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By\u00a0Ken Stone\u00a0(Patch Staff)\u00a0–\u00a0<\/a>December 30, 2012 6:55 am ET<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Updated at 10:45 p.m. Dec. 29, 2012<\/p>\n

RAMONA, CA\u2014Deborah Cooney was valedictorian at West Boylston High School in Massachusetts, an economics graduate of Brown University and a vice president of Peoples Savings Bank in Worcester, MA, for 10 years.<\/p>\n

But after being laid off during an ownership change in the mid-1990s, she decided to pursue her dream of becoming a professional musician.<\/p>\n

She moved to San Diego.<\/p>\n

Under the stage name\u00a0Celeste<\/a>, she played piano and sang at the Queen Mary, Ritz Carlton, Century Plaza Hotel and \u201clots of resorts, bars and dives all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney, now 50, lived in La Jolla for almost a year (when not performing on a Caribbean cruise) and later moved to North Clairemont, where she opened a studio and took in piano and voice students.<\/p>\n

But in April 2011, she was suddenly pained by a high-pitched ringing in her ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the exact moment the tinnitus started,\u201d Cooney said Friday. \u201cI was just relaxing in my house in between [teaching] sessions. And all of a sudden it was like somebody turned something on.\u201d<\/p>\n

She suspects it was triggered by a bank of 100-plus wireless smart meters installed at a nearby apartment complex.<\/p>\n

The miseries multiplied, she said via telephone from her home in rural West Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t stand the house anymore,\u201d Cooney said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep in the house. I couldn\u2019t eat any of the food in the house \u2026 it got so radiated it got me sick. \u2026 I was eating out. I was trying to sleep on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her beloved cat died.<\/p>\n

Mimi was a purebred Himalayan adopted in 2003, whose \u201cbehavior completely flipped,\u201d Cooney said. The feline went from being an indoor \u201cqueen of the house\u201d to one who stayed outdoors and eventually ran away, only to return \u201ccompletely dehydrated, having heart palpitations \u2026 the same things I was suffering from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came back because she realized there was no place to go,\u201d Cooney said. \u201cOur whole neighborhood was radiated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally\u2014on Aug. 24, 2011\u2014Cooney decided she couldn\u2019t sleep, work or live in her own house, so \u201cI think I\u2019d better just leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

She piled some dresses into her 2003 Hyundai Accent, left her \u201csignificant other\u201d Frisbee champion boyfriend and drove 2,600 miles from Chateau Drive to the\u00a0National Radio Quiet Zone<\/a>\u00a0in West Virginia.<\/p>\n

Nine days ago, she went one more step\u2014filing a $120 million lawsuit against San Diego Gas & Electric Co., smart-meter maker Itron, state Attorney General Kamala Harris, the state Public Utilities Commission and its president, Michael Peevey, and others.<\/p>\n

The suit, filed\u00a0in San Francisco federal court,\u00a0could be a first of its kind.<\/p>\n

It alleges:<\/p>\n

[Cooney] could feel the immediate effects of radiation when she walked in the front door, experiencing a pins-and-needles feeling all over her skin, muscle contractions, stiffness, and pain, ataxia, dehydration, etc. Plaintiff felt a shock to her heart \u2026 at exactly 1:00, 5:00, and 9:00, as if something was being transmitted every four hours, on the hour. The shock would initiate cascading heart attack symptoms: chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, nausea, circulatory problems, edema, numbness and an impending sense of doom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acting as her own attorney, Cooney in her 12,000-word civil suit [attached] blames SDG&E and others for the loss of her ability to live in California and their failure to protect her from harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe smart grid completely destroyed [my life] plan\u201d of buying a home, solar panels and a plug-in electric car, she said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

Now, she says, \u201cI\u2019m having a hell of a time surviving and paying the bills. \u2026 I\u2019m not happy here. I want to be in California\u2014and I can\u2019t because of the smart grid.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she lives in a 10-by-20-foot rented cabin with no electricity and drives 8 miles to use a small home to shower, cook and use the phone and computer.<\/p>\n

The suit is being reviewed by SDG&E, according to utility spokeswoman Erin Coller, who issued a preliminary response Friday night. [See attached PDF.]<\/p>\n

\u201cSDG&E is committed to addressing customer concerns about the safety of its services and equipment,\u201d Coller said in part. \u201cSDG&E supports the California Public Utilities Commission decision of giving residential customers a choice in what type of electric meters they want at their home through the smart meter opt-out program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terrie Prosper, director of the PUC\u2019s public information office, told Patch: \u201cWe do not comment on pending litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney is no stranger to legal action. After an August 2008 altercation with a lifeguard at La Jolla Cove, she was sent to the county mental hospital. A staff psychiatrist found nothing wrong with her and granted her release, but Cooney sued over a 20-hour involuntary detention.<\/p>\n

Her suit against the city and county of San Diego and lifeguard John Kerr eventually was dismissed, which a\u00a0state appellate court affirmed<\/a>. But Cooney won settlements or judgments in several other cases involving her former attorneys, a landlord, a tenant and a doctor who testified in her detention case.<\/p>\n

But the experience of bringing the city and state suit \u201choned\u201d her skills and \u201creally set me up to do this federal case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In fact, she refiled claims against the city and county and will decide by February whether to bring another suit in the La Jolla Cove case, saying she was wrongfully denied a jury trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a person who really wants to sue people,\u201d she said of the 2008 case. \u201cI made the decision to stand up for my legal rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney calls San Diego a \u201cvery, very corrupt place\u201d\u2014worse even than New Orleans. (She once lived in the\u00a0French Quarter, she says.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNow with the smart grid encroaching everywhere, there\u2019s almost no place to live anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s catastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney takes inspiration from Ralph Nader, who she backed for president several times, and calls herself an activist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want everybody to be happy and healthy\u201d with \u201cconstitutional rights honored and the environment protected,\u201d Cooney says. So she filed the 49-page federal suit to get the attention of what she calls the government-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more you let the abusers get away with this stuff, the bigger and badder the abuse becomes,\u201d she told Patch. \u201cThe more lawsuits we can hit them with, the less profitable it is to hurt us. \u2026 When you are dealing with corporations and the government-industrial complex, the only thing they notice is profit. That\u2019s the only language they speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

She readily acknowledges she doesn\u2019t expect to win $120 million, \u201cbut the reality is my damages are well beyond [that].\u00a0 \u2026 I\u2019m just conservatively saying $100 million, but really it\u2019s worth billions. It\u2019s worth trillions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney\u2014who prefers \u201cnatural medicine\u201d to Western medicine\u2014says she put a \u201cnumber on [the suit] that I thought was sufficiently high enough to get the defendants\u2019 attention and get people\u2019s attention to the catastrophic losses that not only me but a lot of people are suffering. That number doesn\u2019t come anywhere near what the actual damages are.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she\u2019s already made two settlement offers to the defendants. Both were rejected, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhereas I am willing to be reasonable and just settle, they are not willing to be reasonable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cooney is part of a pipeline of several hundred \u201cradiation refugees\u201d ending up in an area of West Virginia protected from cell phone towers. She\u2019s renting her cabin from Diane Schou\u2014who calls herself a victim of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS.<\/p>\n

Schou, who moved to Green Bank from Iowa, was\u00a0profiled 15 months ago<\/a>\u00a0by the BBC, and was quoted as saying: \u201cLiving here allows me to be more of a normal person. I can be outdoors. I don\u2019t have to stay hidden in a\u00a0Faraday Cage.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

But even though cell phone towers are banned and even the local library lacks Wi-Fi, smart meters have invaded, Cooney says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve completely dropped the ball on smart meters,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t stand it here either.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she visited her father in New Jersey over Christmas\u2014\u201cand there are no smart meters anywhere around them. \u2026. I felt great there\u2014all analog meters.\u00a0I was thinking: Maybe I should move to New Jersey\u2014of all places. Like who wants to live in New Jersey, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Returning to Green Bank, Cooney found the first snow on the ground, and \u201cexcept for the main highway, they don\u2019t shovel or plow anything around here. \u2026 It\u2019s a backward place. I really don\u2019t like it here. \u2026 I\u2019m just kind of stuck here for now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooney longs to return to the Golden State\u2014\u201cI moved to California and built a life there for a reason\u201d\u2014but would do so only through an injunction against smart meters.<\/p>\n

She expects a vicious fight when the case comes before\u00a0Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero<\/a>\u2014although Cooney says she may request\u00a0a federal judge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defendants in this case are probably going to use dirty tricks and disobey the law and probably are going to malign me,\u201d she said in a laughter-punctuated interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what defendants usually do\u2014especially when a plaintiff has a good solid case against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter the outcome, Cooney has already declared victory: \u201cI\u2019ve created a huge problem for these people who are trying to get away with murder, and it costs them a lot of money in defending [the lawsuit]. So I\u2019ve already won in that I\u2019ve created a huge impact here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that I\u2019m a role model and that other people \u2026 will file similar lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

http:\/\/patch.com\/california\/ramona\/radiation-refugee-files-120-million-suit-vs-calif-sdgf9fa659ca3<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.electricsense.com\/7769\/smart-meter-radiation-refugee-emf-lawsuit\/<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professional musician claims wireless smart meter health effects forced her to flee San Diego home.\u00a0 By\u00a0Ken Stone\u00a0(Patch Staff)\u00a0–\u00a0December 30, 2012 6:55 am ET Updated at 10:45 p.m. Dec. 29, 2012 RAMONA, CA\u2014Deborah Cooney was valedictorian at West Boylston High School in Massachusetts, an economics graduate of Brown University and a vice president of Peoples Savings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[291,5,349,298,344,3,376,18,289],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-usa-2","category-ehs","category-electromagnetic-sensitivity","category-electropollution","category-fcc","category-health_and_safety","category-radiation-refugee","category-smart-meter","category-usa-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9677,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9673\/revisions\/9677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}