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Clearing the air

Compensation sought from the American who brought deadly tuberculosis into his fellow passengers' lives

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 25th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Eva Šustková, 66, and her sister were Andrew Speaker's seatmates on the flight to Montreal, and will now have to undergo TB tests for the next eight years.
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The TB threat

Tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, appears in two ways:
Latent infection: The patient carries the bacteria but feels no symptoms and can't spread the illness
Active disease: The patient has symptoms, often feels ill and can spread the bacteria

TB is spread through the air, when someone with active TB coughs or sneezes
Andrew Speaker has active TB, but was not showing symptoms during his European travels
Because he wasn't coughing or sneezing during his flights, risk of transmission was considered low
Recent tests confirmed he has multidrug-resistant TB, not the extensively drug-resistant and often-fatal form originally thought

Source: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
www.webMD.com

COURTESY PHOTO
Speaker, 31, became the first person to be forcibly quarantined in the United States since 1963.
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COURTESY PHOTO
Inset: Andrew Speaker and his wife, Sarah, are interviewed at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver on ABC's Good Morning America.
Everything seemed normal and routine as Czech Airlines flight 0104 left Prague’s Ruzyně Airport the afternoon of May 24 for its eight-hour journey to Montreal.
But it didn’t take long for Eva Šustková, 66, to notice her seatmate was behaving oddly.
Though the plane’s cabin was quite warm, he wrapped himself tightly in a blanket, at one point covering his head with it. How strange, Šustková remarked to her sister and traveling companion, 69-year-old Ludmila Urbanová.
It wasn’t until days later that the women discovered their peculiar seatmate was 31-year-old Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta lawyer now notorious for traveling across Europe and the Atlantic while knowingly carrying a serious, drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The sisters had been seated beside him in row 12.
That shocking revelation ruined the sisters’ three-week vacation to visit family in Quebec, and though they’ve tested negative so far for TB, their lives have been turned upside down.
Now, they’re seeking compensation. On July 12, a Montreal law firm launched a civil suit against Speaker in Quebec court on behalf of Urbanová, Šustková and eight other claimants. The two sisters are suing for $100,000 Canadian ($95,786/2 million Kč) each.
“Things like that shouldn’t be allowed to happen again,” Šustková said from her home in Zlín, south Moravia. Her sister lives in Šumperk, north Moravia. “All the plane could have become infected. … He should be punished … for having traveled like that, knowing he was sick.”
Unwittingly, the sisters have become caught up in a case that raises questions about travel and freedom of movement in an era when pandemics are a growing concern.
Though aware of his TB infection, Speaker had flown to Europe to get married against the recommendation of U.S. authorities. While in Italy, he was notified that he likely had an extensively drug-resistant strain of the disease, was on a U.S. no-fly list and was told to stay put. Instead, Speaker fled to Prague and on to Montreal, where he rented a car and drove to New York before turning himself in. He was placed under an involuntary isolation order, the first in the United States since 1963.
“We saw that there was civil liability in this case,” said Anlac Nguyen of Montreal law firm Nachar Nguyen. The firm contacted the sisters to propose launching their case after their names appeared in Canadian media. Since the case’s launch, five more claimants have joined in, and five more are being evaluated by the firm, he said.
The women are suing for one of the largest amounts because of their proximity to Speaker, he said.
Only one other claimant in the case is asking for more, a graduate student that had to postpone his master’s thesis because he’s restricted from flying abroad to conduct his research. He’s asking for $142,000 Canadian in compensation, Nguyen said.
A lengthy ordeal
One of the worst parts of their ordeal was being in the dark, Šustková said.
“We did not know anything,” she said. “We went to visit our brother, everything was fine and it was only when our brother saw the story on TV that we heard there was a person with TB onboard [our flight].”
Her nephew contacted authorities, who didn’t immediately tell the sisters they’d been sitting right next to Speaker.
“The following week we had to go through testing, I went again a week later and when we got back [to the Czech Republic] I had to be X-rayed two times,” Šustková said.
The vacation and family reunion they’d saved and planned for for two years was ruined, she said.
“We were really stressed out. … When you find out such things, you are definitely not in the mood to party,” Šustková said.
“They were asked, more or less, to confine themselves. It was a real loss of their vacation,” Nguyen said. Fear of infecting their family members filled them with a feeling of guilt, and the burden of the ordeal has affected their retirement, a time they’d expected to be relaxing and worry-free. “In the language of the law, we call that pain and suffering,” he said.
Of the sum they’re suing for, $60,000 is for pain and suffering.
“I’m very tired of all this,” said their brother, Peter Renyo, from his home outside Montreal. Not only was his sisters’ visit ruined, but the case has plagued the family since. “It’s always around.”
The family just wants everything to go back to normal, he said.
A strong case
It shouldn’t take much for the courts to find Speaker liable in this case, Nguyen predicted.
“We feel very good about the legal liability. … We’re less certain about the amount the plaintiffs will get,” he said, adding that such cases typically take one to three years to reach a verdict.
In addition to pain and suffering, the amount claimed by the sisters takes into account the expense of their vacation to Canada and the expenses of traveling to Prague for TB testing for at least three more years.
Compensation for the expenses is “likely” to be granted, Nguyen said. Any amount granted for pain and suffering “depends on the testimony or affidavits of the ladies.”
While compensation for Šustková and Urbanová is deserved, this case isn’t just about money, he said.
“The case brings up many legal questions … that have not been scrutinized,” Nguyen said. “My ulterior motive is to prevent this from happening again.”
— Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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