The State - News from Aug. 30, 1985

A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed 43 suits for injuries and deaths blamed on U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing, upholding a new federal law that bans suits against the laboratories that ran the tests. Ethan Schulman, a lawyer for the people who sued, said the case could affect thousands of participants in the tests and their families nationwide. He called them “forgotten victims of the atomic era.” He said it was the first known major ruling on the constitutionality of the new law. The federal law says those claiming injury from radiation in nuclear weapons tests can sue only the government, and not government contractors.