Flight attendant's case blazes trail for tobacco lawsuits.

Publication: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2001 South Florida Sun-Sentinal

Byline: Terri Somers

MIAMI _ There it was in black and white, projected onto a wide screen in Miami-Dade Circuit Court _ X-rays of former flight attendant Marie Fontana's chest, taken annually and showing the progression of diseases that appear to be petrifying her lungs.

There, too, was the fuzzy outline of the growing fungus ball, first appearing in the left lung and later spreading to the right. Untreatable, radiologist Dr. Michael Foley testified, because those cavities in her lungs are dead, lacking a flow of blood that could carry the antibiotics to fight the fungus.

And so it began.

March 21 was the start of much more than testimony in Fontana's fight to convince a jury that the diseases marching through her lungs are the result of working for decades in airplanes clogged with the smoke of cigarette puffing passengers.

R.J. Reynolds attorney Jonathan Engram told the jury earlier that Fontana, 58, of Boca Raton, suffers only from sarcoidosis, which he said has no known cause.

Fontana's lawsuit is just the first of...

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