WEB
XTRA: View
some of the key documents in the Williams trial , including
confidential internal memos from Philip Morris.
Other useful sites are www.tobacco.org,
www.smokescreen.org
and www.philipmorris.com.
Last week's record $80.3 million judgment against Philip
Morris represents a major setback for the tobacco industry--not
just because of the size of the damages awarded, but also
because it demonstrates the persuasive power of a new
legal weapon for plaintiffs: confidential company memos.
"The documents were the case," says lawyer Chuck Tauman,
part of the legal team that represented the Williams
family. The family sued Philip Morris for its role in
the death of Portland janitor Jesse Williams, a lifelong
Marlboro smoker who died of lung cancer in 1997.
In the past, tobacco company lawyers have been able
to defeat legal challenges by casting doubt on the links
between smoking, addiction and lung cancer. That changed
last year during the titanic legal battle between cigarette
makers and state attorneys general trying to recoup
health-care expenditures. A Minnesota judge ordered
Philip Morris and other cigarette makers to release
thousands of previously undisclosed internal documents,
some dating back to the 1950s.
The documents revealed that executives knew about the
addictive and carcinogenic properties of cigarettes
but engaged in a decades-long effort to suppress that
information. They also showed the industry supported
"front" organizations that echoed its message that the
scientific evidence on smoking was inconclusive.
By combining these memos with Jesse Williams' health
records, the Williams family's legal team--which, in
addition to Tauman, included local lawyers Bill Gaylord,
Ray Thomas and Jim Coon--was able to convince a Multnomah
County jury to hit Philip Morris with the highest punitive
damages ever in an individual smoking case.
After the trial, jurors cited the documents as a key
factor in their decision. "I'd have to say it was the
documents," juror Debra Barton told The Oregonian.
Despite the lure of big fees and bold headlines, plaintiffs'
attorneys--hardly a diffident breed--have traditionally
shied away from suing cigarette manufacturers. Taking
on Philip Morris was "a huge, huge risk," says Coon.
"As an investment it's insane." The main reason for
this reluctance is the tobacco companies' intimidating
track record. Over the past four decades they have managed
to beat back virtually every smoker's lawsuit filed
against them. The few cases that have been decided against
the cigarette makers have been overturned on appeal.
In addition, tobacco litigation is enormously complex.
The Williams team spent thousands of hours and hundreds
of thousands of dollars to assemble its case. The kind
of effort needed to defeat a corporate titan like Philip
Morris can easily exhaust the resources of plaintiffs'
attorneys, who typically work in small firms or in solo
practice.
In the wake of the Minnesota settlement, however, suing
cigarette makers has gotten simpler, in part because
a network of plaintiffs' attorneys and anti-tobacco
activists is busily trading unflattering confidential
company memos released in Minnesota.
The Williams case was only the second smoker's trial
against Philip Morris in which plaintiffs' attorneys
were able to take advantage of those documents. (The
first trial came in February, when a San Francisco jury
slapped Philip Morris with $51.5 million in damages.)
Industry analysts are nervous about the implications.
"The juries apparently have been very angered by the
allegation of differences between what the companies
knew privately and what they said publicly," Salomon
Smith Barney tobacco analyst Martin Feldman told Reuters.
"The plaintiff lawyers have been very effective at using
the documents on an emotional basis."
The Williams trial is just the beginning. There are
now hundreds of other cases pending against Philip Morris
around the country--many of which will revolve around
the very same documents that proved successful in Portland.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 7,
1999
