Lawyer: Siren case not as simple as just noise

Well, duh!

That might best sum up an attorney's argument Thursday to a lawsuit that claims a siren company's products are too loud.

"We think it's pretty tough to believe that somebody could believe they're going to become a fireman and not be subjected to loud noises," Philip Beck told a Cook County jury. Beck is the attorney for Oakbrook-based siren manufacturer Federal Signal.

But it's not that simple, said Jordan Margolis, attorney for 28 Chicago firefighters suing the company and claiming hearing loss.

Safety experts were warning since 1981 that sirens should be moved from atop the cabs of fire trucks to the front bumper to preserve the hearing of firefighters, Margolis said.

But Federal Signal ignored that evidence and kept churning out cab-mounted sirens until their first bumper model in 1989, he said.

Nor did the company ever test what the exposure was for firefighters who were less than 10 feet away from the sirens, he said.

"Because they didn't care what the exposure was for the firefighters. Because they thought it was somebody else's job," Margolis said. "They had no warnings --nada, nothing -- before 1987."

But Beck argued that Federal Signal was actually ahead of the industry and noted that the National Fire Protection Association didn't start recommending bumper-mounted sirens until 1992 -- three years after Federal Signal started making them.

Beck pointed out that Federal Signal merely manufactures the sirens and includes warnings with the devices. Where those warnings are placed in the cabs are up to the fire truck manufacturers, he said. What hearing protection -- if any -- is dictated by individual fire departments, he said.

A jury of nine men and five women are hearing the case being tried before Cook County circuit court Judge William J. Haddad in the Daley Center. The trial is expected to last about a month.

On Wednesday, the trial was briefly interrupted, ironically, when fire alarms on the 16th floor of the Daley Center erupted as Margolis addressed jurors. The interruption postponed Federal Signal's opportunity to address the jury until Thursday.

The alarms were part of a drill that Haddad had tried to have postponed, but without success, he told the jury. He instructed the jury that the alarms were not part of the trial and were complete happenstance.