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• Former tobacco seller battled cigarette giant 

Joseph Battaglia met everything in life head on, his son says.

And that is why the former tobacco salesperson wasn't afraid to face down Canada's largest tobacco company in hopes of proving the Matinee Extra Mild cigarettes he smoked for six years were secretly designed to prevent him from quitting. . . .

Mr. Battaglia, 63, died Friday night after suffering a heart attack while he walked to a corner store near his apartment, his son Tony said.

His suit against Imperial Tobacco Canada was the first of its kind in Canada, and not about money, his son said. . . .

The case that catapulted Mr. Battaglia into prominence is still before the appeal courts, his son said. In 2001, a judge dismissed Mr. Battaglia's $6,000 small-claims suit, in which he claimed to have developed heart disease from smoking.

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• Anyone can quit smoking, trial told 

A U.S. expert on substance abuse testifying for Imperial Tobacco Canada says cigarettes are not truly addictive and anyone can quit if they're motivated.

The word addiction is no longer employed in a medical context because it's overused and applied in society to such behaviour as eating chocolates and watching bad movies, testified Dr. Harvey Hammer, chair of the department of psychiatry at Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey.

``The implication is the person has no choice, that a person has no free will,'' Hammer told a North York small claims court yesterday. . .

Quitting smoking more like giving up caffeine than drugs, expert testifies

Hammer, who confirmed he is being paid his usual rate of $7,500 (U.S.) a day over two days for attending and testifying, said the term substance dependency is preferable to addiction.

People too often say ``I am addicted and I can't do anything about it and I find that frankly alarming. We are somehow suggesting that to people when we call it addiction,'' he said. . .

Hammer testified all the patients he treats who are genuinely motivated to quit have been successful.

He said people who want to recover from a substance dependency must start by saying, `` `I am responsible for my own behaviour.' That's a basic psychological concept.''

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• Safer smokes stifled, court is told 

British American Tobacco resisted efforts by its Canadian subsidiary, Imasco, to develop a safer cigarette in the 1980s, Imasco's former chief executive testified yesterday.

Purdy Crawford said although the Imasco board was very keen to develop the safer cigarette, it was disappointed it wasn't able to convince its minority owner, British American Tobacco (BAT) of London, to lend its support and expertise to the project.

Crawford told a North York small claims court yesterday that Jean Louis Mercier, then chief executive of Imasco-owned Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., ``was frustrated in dealing with his contemporaries at BAT.''

``He was crestfallen, as I recall.'' . .

Crawford told Battaglia's lawyer, Doug Lennox, that he didn't order anyone at Imperial Tobacco to inform Health Canada about research pointing to a possibly safer cigarette. As head of Imasco, he had no day-to-day control of the subsidiary and it wasn't his style to give it orders, he said.

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