In a brief filed in U.S. District Court in Denver on the eve of a key hearing, the attorneys also said the government continues to withhold evidence. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for today. The state Health Department decided yesterday to vaccinate up to 5,800 high school students to protect them from a meningitis-related outbreak that has killed two teenagers and left a third seriously ill. Health officials will start administering the shots for free Friday to students in six schools in and around Alliance, a northeastern Ohio city of 23,000. Two area high school students died more than a week ago after contracting a blood infection caused by a strain of the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis.
Officials suspect that the two shared a water bottle at a school picnic last month.
On Saturday, a student at another high school was diagnosed with the same kind of blood infection. The bacteria give victims either meningitis, a disease of the brain, or meningococcemia, a blood infection. The settlement by the Writers Guild of America has soothed fears of labor unrest that threatened earlier this year to disrupt the movie and TV industry. Two actors' guilds were continuing their own contract negotiations.