FAYETTEVILLE -- Remaining lawsuits alleging arsenic in chicken litter caused cancer in Prairie Grove should be put on hold until an appeal of the first case is finished, according to a motion filed this week.

Michael "Blu" Green and his parents sued Alpharma and Alpharma Animal Health, makers of the arsenic-based feed additive Roxarsone. The Greens claimed exposure to arsenic from litter spread on farm fields near Prairie Grove in the 1990s caused Blu to develop a rare form of leukemia.

The case went to trial for three weeks in September. A Washington County Circuit Court jury took only 21 minutes to reject the Greens' claims.

Notice of appeal in the Green case was filed Oct. 13.

A number of cases, with about 100 plaintiffs, make similar claims and are pending. The outcome of the Green appeal will directly affect those cases, according to attorneys.

They want Washington County Circuit Judge Kim Smith to stay all proceedings until the Green appeal is complete. They also want Smith to continue the next scheduled case, which is set for April 2007.

In January, Smith ruled that all individual claims must be tried separately but that his evidentiary rulings would apply to all the cases.

Smith's decisions in the Green case that are being appealed include rulings to exclude or limit the arsenic dose testimony of expert witnesses for the plaintiffs; the exclusion of evidence regarding excess childhood cancers, in addition to leukemia; and, the dismissal of area poultry companies from the suit before trial.

"If the court has made just one error, whether that be exclusion of a dose calculation, exclusion of a culpable party, or exclusion of evidence of additional cancers, then those rulings would need to be corrected for all the Green plaintiff cases," according to brief in support of the motion to stay. "Because the orders go to the core issues in all cases, these cases should be stayed pending the outcome of the appeal."

Because the Green trial has been completed, any errors made in that trial can be resolved on appeal before being compounded in subsequent trials involving the same issues, according to the brief.