Willamette Week | News| Health Care

Lawyers for tobacco giant Philip Morris last week tried to prevent highly sensitive internal files from reaching a Multnomah County jury scheduled to decide a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the company.

Among other things, the disputed documents reveal that:

* executives knew about the addictive and carcinogenic properties of cigarettes but engaged in a decades-long effort to suppress that information;

* the company sought to allay public health concerns by producing cigarettes that gave the impression of being less harmful, but were not;

* the company routinely conducted market research on underage smokers as young as 12 years old.

The documents are key exhibits in a trial that pits the nation's largest cigarette maker against the family of Jesse Williams, a former janitor for the Portland Public School District and lifelong Marlboro smoker who died of lung cancer in 1997 at the age of 67. Two months after his death, the Williams family brought a wrongful death suit against Philip Morris, charging that the tobacco company showed "reckless and outrageous indifference" to the health risks of its own products and "deceived the public" about the dangers of smoking. The Williams family is seeking $110 million in compensation and punitive damages.

Lawyers for Philip Morris declined to comment on the case, as did lawyers for the Williams family. However, Philip Morris issued a statement denying any negligence or deception and asserting that smoking was not the cause of Williams' lung cancer.

Similar wrongful death lawsuits have been filed against cigarette makers over the years, but most have been unsuccessful--in part because tobacco company lawyers have been able to cast doubt on the links between smoking, addiction and lung cancer. But last year a Minnesota judge ordered Philip Morris to release thousands of previously undisclosed internal documents, some dating back to the 1950s.

The documents show that not only was the company keenly aware of the health implications of smoking, but that it also tried to blunt public concerns by suppressing unfavorable research and supporting "front" organizations that echoed Philip Morris' message that the scientific evidence on smoking was inconclusive.

Anti-smoking advocates hope these documents, combined with changing social attitudes toward smoking, will turn the tide against big tobacco. Two weeks ago, a San Francisco jury stunned the industry by slapping Philip Morris with $51.5 million in damages in a suit similar to the Williams case. After the trial, jurors cited the documents as a key factor in their decision.

"The documents have a great impact," says lawyer Holly Meyers, who worked on the case against Philip Morris in San Francisco. "[Company executives] know smoking causes cancer--their own scientists have known this for years. Just showing the massive suppression is important."

As WW goes to press, it remains unclear exactly which of these files the Multnomah County jury will get to see. It's certainly not hard to understand why Philip Morris wants to keep them away from the jury: The documents provide a spellbinding history of the company's 40-year campaign of deception. They also strike at the heart of two key arguments the tobacco industry has always relied on in previous lawsuits: that smoking is neither carcinogenic nor addictive.

The internal documents the Williams family wants admitted as evidence suggest that Philip Morris researchers knew about the dangers of smoking more than four decades ago. For example, a 1958 memo to Philip Morris research director R. N. DuPuis states, "The evidence is building up that heavy cigarette smoking contributes to lung cancer either alone or in association with physical and physiological factors."

Rather than filter harmful substances out of its cigarettes, however, the company sought to assuage consumer fears. In a confidential 1966 report entitled "Market Potential of a Health Cigarette," researcher Myron Johnston Jr. wrote, "A cigarette that does not deliver nicotine cannot satisfy the habituated smoker and cannot lead to habituation, and would therefore almost certainly fail." Instead, he suggested introducing a new method of filtration to appeal to more health-conscious smokers, concluding that "the illusion of filtration is as important as the fact of filtration."

The internal documents also include devastating revelations about Philip Morris' efforts to suppress information about the addictiveness of nicotine. The company knew about the habit-forming qualities of nicotine as early as 1969, when the internal paper "Why One Smokes" described how smoking begins as a "symbolic act" of rebellion, a motivation supplanted by the addictive qualities of nicotine. "As the force from the psychosocial symbolism subsides, the pharmacological effect takes over to sustain the habit."

But the company tried to keep this information quiet. For example, a 1977 memo from Philip Morris senior scientist W. L. Dunn Jr. described a proposal to examine the addictive effects of nicotine. "If [the researcher] is able to demonstrate, as she anticipates, no withdrawal effects of nicotine, we will want to pursue this avenue with some vigor," the memo reads. "If, however, the results with nicotine are similar to those gotten with morphine and caffeine, we will want to bury it."

In 1980, Dunn sent another memo saying that the company had to be in a position "to plead ignorance about any pathological relationship between smoke and smoker" and concluded that Morris should engage in a "clandestine effort" to research the pharmacological properties of nicotine.

Other documents detail the company's efforts to attract young smokers, including market research performed on smokers as young as 12 years old, and its ongoing campaign to keep sensitive research out of public view by having the research conducted in Germany.

These documents played a key role in the San Francisco case. In the wake of the verdict, industry observers wondered if tobacco companies might reconsider their legal strategy. If the Portland trial is any guide, however, Philip Morris has not been willing to shake its own habits.

In pretrial motions, for example, the firm sought to prevent the jury from seeing not only once-secret company memos but documents that have been available to the public for years. For example, lawyers argued against admitting Surgeon General reports on smoking, arguing they contained "hearsay evidence." Lawyers also tried to exclude articles from the Journal of the American Medical Association, information about Philip Morris' lobbying expenditures, information about a Department of Justice criminal probe into the tobacco industry and references to The Runaway Jury, a John Grisham thriller involving a tobacco lawsuit.

Last week, Philip Morris attorney Walter Cofer even went so far as to extol the virtues of tobacco in pre-trial motions before judge Anna Brown. "Cigarettes do generate economic benefits," he said. "That's something a jury can consider. There are benefits to society, and there are benefits to the individual smoker."

But even while Philip Morris rallies its troops with the same old battle cry, cigarette manufacturers are under tremendous pressure. First, state attorneys general ganged up on them and won a massive $206 billion settlement last year for health-care expenditures under Medicaid. Then President Clinton made a surprise announcement in his State of the Union address that the federal government would file its own suit. Now labor union healthcare plans are jumping on the bandwagon, and hundreds of other individual lawsuits are pending nationwide. "If [the Williams family] can win here, that'll be a big step toward settling these cases all over the country," says Portland trial lawyer Mike Williams (no relation to the Portland plaintiffs), who is suing tobacco companies in a Louisiana class-action suit.

Opening arguments in the Portland trial are scheduled to begin this week.

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Willamette Week | originally published February 24, 1999