How Arthur Firstenberg Made His Neighbor’s Life A Living Hell
February 21st, 2013
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You may remember Arthur Fishtenberg. Back in 2008, I described him as “The Jackass in the foil hat” for his various antics against various municipalities who dared to allow wireless devices to be used in their buildings. According to Fishtenberg, a dental X-ray in 1982 somehow transformed him into an elector-hypersensitive and perpetually tortured victim of all things wireless. Apparently he bounced around various communities in the US pulling this claim out to anyone who would listen.
Firstenberg has written several articles and a book about the dangers of wireless devices. He has founded groups and is cited on a number of websites as a crusader for the rights of those who supposedly are harmed by these devices. He has also filed many many lawsuits.
Apparently, in more recent years, Firstenberg has decided to take his battle directly to the individuals who dare to use RF-emitting devices in their own homes. That’s what happened in 2010 when Raphaela Monribot had the misfortune of renting a home next to Arthur Firstenberg. Miss Monribot, a graphic artist, didn’t do anything to cause conflict with her new neighbor other than daring to own a cell phone and a laptop computer.
In fact, Monribot had been acquainted with Firstenberg before moving next to him. She had previously been briefly hired to cook for Firstenberg when she lived in the same area. Apparently, she was also acquainted with the landlord who Firstenberg had bought his home from and who still owned the adjacent home, which is where she took up residence. It seems that the fact that Firstenberg already knew Monribot opened the door for his increasingly invasive requests.
Shortly after moving into her new residence, Firstenberg bagan harrassing Miss Monribot over her use of wireless devices, compact fluorescent lights and dimmer switches.
He claimed that her use of an iPhone, laptop and even her lights were causing him to suffer from a variety of symptoms, including nausia, headaches, the insomnia and various other non-specific complaints. Fishetenberg demanded that Miss Monribot stop using her wireless devices and go so far as to modify the electrical wiring in her home. According to Fishtenberg “I didn’t want to go to court. I just wanted her to work with me… “She basically refused. ? I felt like I had no choice but to give up my home.”
Miss Monribot did try to accommodate Firstenberg’s demands. She turned off her laptop’s Wifi, despite the extreme inconvenience it caused her. She even allowed some of Firtstenberg’s friends into her home to inspect and manipulate her wiring and appliances. Despite this, according to Monribot “he was relentlessly pursuing me regarding the iphone and the electric wiring in the house.”
There are, of course, other homes in the area that use wifi and have electronic devices, but according to Fistenberg, the fact that his home and Monribot used a common connection to the local power grid somehow made it a more acute problem. As he put it “because the two houses at one time were on a single lot, their electrical systems are fed from a single main cable. In fact, the electric meter for my house is mounted on (Monribot’s) house. Electromagnetic fields emitted in (Monribot’s) house are transmitted by wire directly into my house. Of course, this makes no sense at all. The frequencies used by wireless networks are not picked up and transmitted by the mains AC cable of a home. But that did not stop Fistenberg.
Things went from bad to worse when Firstenberg, who claimed he was forced to move from his home and camp out in cars and friends’ homes, decided it was time to file a lawsuit. The lawsuit named Raphaela Monribot and her landlord, Robin Leith. The lawsuit demanded that the court order Monribot to stop using her wireless phone, wifi and other devices and for Monribot and Leith to pay Fistenberg a total of one million dollars for “injuries, illness, pain and suffering” plus an additional $430,000 for loss of value to his property. This represents what he had paid for his home, so apparently Fistenberg was claiming that her use of wifi effectively had made his home forever worthless. As Firstenberg said ” (Try to figure out that one.)
Firstenberg supported his lawsuit with a large number of notes from various doctors who he had visited as a result of his elector-sensitivity. Apparently, he had managed to track down quite a few gullible MD’s. This was accompanied by volumes of anecdotal evidence and claims from various groups about the dangers of electromagnetic fields.
One would have hoped that the lawsuit would have simply been tossed. After all, it asserted damages from a condition that mainstream science does not recognize as existing and is based on claims which cannot be independently verified. This is not what happened. Instead, a long legal battle began. Firstenberg demanded increasingly restrictive measures. He started claiming that not only was his neighbors laptop causing him health problems when operating with wifi, but was actually causing him pain even when it was charging.
While these motions were generally rejected, it eventually became too much for Monribot, who moved away from Firstenberg. Still, he continued to pursue his lawsuit. Failing to come to any kind of settlement, the lawsuit moved forward toward trial.
Thankfully, a judge did eventually begin to see the light in the summer of 2012. Firstenberg had called upon two “experts” to testify on the effects of his condition. However, the defense argued that the condition described was not accepted by mainstream science as existing and that double-blind studies conducted by organizations like the World Health Organization had failed to show that there was any basis for the condition at all. Given this, the judge ruled that Firstenberg could not submit the testimony or the test results conducted by his own experts until he could prove, under proper controls, that the condition did exist and that he could indeed detect electromagnetic radiation.
The judge appointed an independent expert, who was tasked with developing an acceptable test protocol to determine, under controlled conditions, whether Firsternberg was affected by wireless devices. The judges orders were simple, and remarkably similar to what this blog’s author has proposed for a test. She ordered Firstenberg to work with the independent expert appointed to establish that, under controlled and blinded conditions, he could determine whether a wireless device was turned on or off.
By September 2012, Firstenberg had failed to comply and provide such evidence and the lawsuit was dismissed. Firstenberg, for his part, claimed that the reason he would not agree to any verifiable testing was that such tests would subject him to further injury from RF radiation. However, he did continue to offer evidence from his own private and non-blinded testing.
Unfortunately, this did not end as well as it might seem. Although the lawsuit was thrown out, Miss Monribot was not only forced to move, but was left with a mountain of legal debt from the years of defending herself from the charges. Last month, a judge dismissed a motion by Monribot to recoup some of the $170,000 in legal fees from Firstenberg.
Firstenberg has sated “This will not be the last case. These issues deserve to be examined, not suppressed.” Unfortunately, he seems to (at least in this case) be a man of his word. According to his activist group, he has filed several other lawsuits in the past two years.
On January 2, he filed another lawsuit. This time, targeting a hotel in Santa Fe had been granted a permit to host an AT&T wireless mast, intended to improve local coverage. Firstenberg does not live directly near the hotel, but it is in the downtown area and thus he would likely pass the area. Again, he is citing the health problems he claims it would cause and claims to be fighting for his rights against persecution.
Firsternberg… my god you are such an ass! I mean… seriously!
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2013 at 1:06 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, inverse square. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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February 21st, 2013 at 7:28 am
Firsternberg is not an ass, he’s insane. The Law is an ass!
By letting this case drag out, and not compensating his victim, the Law is encouraging this lunatic in his paranoid beliefs. The lawsuit was dismissed because Firsternberg couldn’t show that a tort had occurred, in fact resisted the court’s attempt to find out whether or not there was a case. This should be grounds for a frivolous prosecution and Ms Monribot should not only have been awarded her costs, but compensated for the trouble Firsternberg put her to.
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February 21st, 2013 at 10:40 am
Tom said:
According to the link, all but $15 of her costs were covered by her insurance, but I agree she should have counter sued for the bother she was put to.
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February 21st, 2013 at 10:57 am
That’s Santa Fe for ya. The artists of Taos are too busy enjoying themselves to bother with lawsuits, but there’s something about SF that brings out the litigious a-holes in people. A nice place to visit, but I’ll never do business there.
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February 21st, 2013 at 11:41 am
DV82XL said:
I missed that part.
However, in any case, I know people who have been sued, and it’s never fun or easy, even if the direct costs are paid. Getting dragged through this for years of your life is a pretty big deal. Not to meniton, she was forced to move, which, I am sure, was not paid by the insurance. (moving companies are expensive) There are a lot of incidental costs like the wages she lost from spending time battling this. Nor should the insurance company and its premium payers be saddled with this.
Unfortunately, even if she won, I don’t think it would be possible to actually get anything from him. He has no assets at all. Everything major that he owned, including his home and car, are now owned by a trust in the name of his mother. Of course. he still basically owns it – he still has control over it. He still lives there. I think it is very clear that this was done to make it impossible to enforce any judgement. If he does not technically own it, you can’t take it from him.
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February 21st, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Do something that is perfectly legal on your own property and face being brought into an expensive lawsuit that uproots your life by a crazy who thinks it magically makes him sick? What a society we live in.
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February 21st, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Firstenberg, for his part, claimed that the reason he would not agree to any verifiable testing was that such tests would subject him to further injury from RF radiation.
The hilarious part here is that he doubtless appeared in court during all this.
And at least around here, courthouses have WiFi. Evil, wicked “RF radiation” permeates them, to exactly the same extent it would in the testing he refused.
One hopes that all future suits from him will be immediately dismissed with prejudice until he can demonstrate anything at all regarding his alleged condition.
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February 21st, 2013 at 5:54 pm
Sigivald said:
Yeah… The court basically said that in order for the case to move forward he had to at least prove that the condition existed, since the defense had presented a lot of evidence that the scientific community rejects its existence.
It’s funny they came down to some of the kind of things I’ve asked for, because the judge effectively gave him the final requirement that, in order to introduce further evidence, he had to, at minimum, prove that he could tell if a device was on or off.
The court appointed Dr. Ned Siegel, a psychologist and social worker who has done a lot of work with the courts before. Dr. Siegel was supposed to work with Firstenberg in order come up with a mutually agreeable test protocol which would have to be double-blind and meet basic standards for scientific rigor.
Apparently they just could never come up with one, because all the tests would have exposed Firstenberg to some level of RF radiation to see if a response could be provoked. I don’t have the source for this, but he complained that was torturous and could do further damage to his health. He even thought if he was placed in a room with wifi devices, just turning them on once could kill him.
So therefore, tests would be impossible.
The funny thing is he seems perfectly willing to expose himself in his own non-blind tests.
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February 21st, 2013 at 6:30 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Steve, that does not even really matter. The point is not just whether you get that money. It’s about time a court spanked this guy hard enough to make him quit his bull****. A large judgement might not be collectable, but he’d have to live under that and they might get some. (hopefully) he’d get the message that this kind of thing is not going to be tolerated.
People in the community need to be able to live in peace and not have someone suddenly demand to come into their house and replace all their lights and switches and then sue them because they have some fictitious condition. This woman was uprooted and put through hell and she did nothing wrong. Businesses should not be subjected to this either. If someone wishes to install wifi for their customers or if the a phone company decides they need to improve coverage, they are doing nothing wrong either.
This can’t be allowed to continue with all the damage and aggravation it is causing people.
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February 21st, 2013 at 6:43 pm
Sigivald said:
yes, most offices and civil buildings to these days. So do places like the coffee shop next to the court house and the office across the street.
If you have a smartphone, try taking it out anywhere public and scanning and you normally see several networks. The only time its blank is if you are out in the sticks somewhere. Also the guards in the courthouse all have radios, there are wireless devices that help set the thermostats and read gas meters and water meters. Remote locks on the car doors. etc etc.
Of course, one thing you realize, if you know this stuff at all, is that once you are not almost directly on toip of these, the total power density fades quickly to the point where it reaches an ambient level that is not much higher than natural interference. The combined field strength in a place where wifi is used in relative close proximity is not much than the field strength anywhere else.
But mister Firstenberg seems to have rjected physics, so that should not matter to him
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February 22nd, 2013 at 5:55 am
This is nothing short of extortion and racketeering.
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February 24th, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Since bees are now known the respond to the EM signature of flowers, perhaps he should change his tack and try proving that all the new EM signals are what is killing off the bees. I bet there would be interesting action then! Hmmm.
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February 24th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
SA Kiteman said:
You have a reference for this statement
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February 24th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
SA Kiteman said:
Bees do not sense electromagnetic fields like the RF fields that are emitted by wireless devices.
They sense the electric field of the flower. It’s not the same at all. It’s the electrostatic potential of the flower. It’s like if you have a pith ball on a string with an electrostatic charge, it will be attracted to things.
It’s not the same at all. An RF field is much different.
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/22/172611866/honey-its-electric-bees-sense-charge-on-flowers
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February 25th, 2013 at 12:55 am
Patent trolls, electromagnetic trolls…
Well.
Time to become a sovereign citizen. Just kidding. The sovereign citizens are trolls as well.
How on earth is our legal system required to take these things seriously?
It was only a few decades ago where people will act like you’re crazy and treat you as such.
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February 27th, 2013 at 5:57 pm
I think we should get together and try to raise some money for Miss Monribot.
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March 6th, 2013 at 4:34 pm
What I want to know is why this twerp hasn’t been marked as a vexatious litigant by now. I mean, this is preposterous. The courts are being far too kind to him.
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