Quebec Class Actions

A year has passed since the first day of the trial, which began March 12, 2012. During the month of March, prosecution lawyers presented witnesses and experts who helped them round up the evidence against tobacco companies (this process will come to an end during the month of April). In recent weeks, factual witnesses came to tell their stories. Thus, the court heard Minoo Bilimoria, former microbiologist at Imperial Tobacco, Wayne Knox, former head of the marketing department at Imperial Tobacco, William A. Farone, former Director of Research and Development at Philip Morris and the famous Insider Jeffrey Wigand, former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson.

A safer cigarette

William A. Farone came to explain how he was hired in 1976 to design a safer cigarette for Philip Morris. Farone has confirmed that he and the company executives took for granted at the time that chemicals in cigarettes caused cancer. This was in fact the reason why he was hired. Meanwhile, the company said in public, as its official speech, that “it has not been proven that smoking causes cancer and addiction.” Farone was dismissed in 1983. At the same time, according to the witness, Philip Morris would have dismantled its research laboratory to eliminate research elements that could be used as evidence in the event of a lawsuit against the company. Remember that Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, one of the companies currently targeted by the class action lawsuit, is a subsidiary of Philip Morris.

During the month of March, many prosecution experts also came to complete their testimony. The court heard Christian Bourque, a specialist in population surveys and market research, Jack Siemiatycki, epidemiology specialist and Professor at Department of Preventive and Social Medicine of University of Montreal, and Dr. Juan Carlos Negrete, addiction specialist and Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University.

By the end of April, lawyers for the prosecution will have exposed the evidence they hold against tobacco companies. Then, it will be time for the tobacco companies to call their witnesses and experts at the helm. The start date of the defense presentation has not been confirmed to date.

September 28, 2012, the Court of Appeal has rejected the request of two of the three accused tobacco companies in class actions trial. Their motion wanted to exclude from trial all evidence relating to smuggling. For judges Dufresne, Pelletier and Rochette of the Court of Appeal, the tobacco companies simply did not have the right to appeal the judgment of first instance at this stage of the trial, long before the final judgment.

Two accused tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco and JTI-MacDonald, had appealed the March 20th of the trial judge, Brian Riordan, who admitted “for the moment” the evidence related to controversial matter. Lawyers representing victims of the class action argued the appropriateness of admitting the evidence on the involvement of tobacco companies in smuggling between 1989 and 1994, since collusion of tobacco companies with smuggling networks has increased the number of new smokers, reduced the proportion of smokers wanting to stop smoking and violated the Canadian Tobacco Act, for not displaying minimum health warnings on packages produced for smuggling.

Remember that, in 2008, Imperial Tobacco and Rothmans Benson & Hedges posted a guilty plea for self-manufactured cigarettes and printed packages that were illegal for resale in the Canadian market between 1989 and 1994. These companies were sentenced to penalties totaling $ 1.15 billion. In 2004, JTI-MacDonald had already been convicted of fuelling smuggling networks, which forced the company to pay $ 1.4 billion to Revenu Québec.

The phenomenon of smuggling in the early 1990s has allowed tobacco companies to seek and obtain substantial declines in tobacco taxes. As a result, sales of legal cigarettes increased as did smoking rates, which reached a pinnacle of 35% in Quebec in 1994.

With this decision by then Court of Appeal, class action’s lawyers can now file as evidence all documents that show that, on top of misleading consumers about their product’s dangers and preventing the government from informing the public – by contesting the new advices on packaging – companies fed the illegal market by distributing cigarette packages without the proper warning signs.