Jump to full article: Florida Board of Governors - State University System , 2009-10-14
Author: Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/14/2009
Intro: In a case with potentially major implications for scholars and publishers, a Stanford University professor who often serves as an expert witness against tobacco companies is fighting an effort by lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to obtain the manuscript of his unpublished and unfinished book on that industry.
A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history of science, to make his book manuscript available to them so they can comb it for possible material to use in cross-examining him in a civil lawsuit pending there.
But the lawyers for the plaintiffs suing the tobacco company last week filed a motion asking the court to reconsider that decision and protect Mr. Proctor from being forced to grant access to the unpublished manuscript. Their motion calls Mr. Proctor their "single most important witness" in their case against the tobacco company, and argues that forcing him to share the manuscript would violate his privacy, his free-speech rights, his academic freedom, and his rights as an author.
Mr. Proctor, for his own part, refused to produce the manuscript at a recent deposition in the case and has retained a San Francisco law firm to fight the subpoena—as well as any other efforts to obtain his book—in California state courts.
In an interview Monday, he said of the book: "It's my private thoughts. They are not organized yet. They are not in finished form." . . .
The Florida court where the case is pending, the state's Seventh Judicial Circuit Court in Volusia County, possibly could entertain arguments for and against the subpoena at a hearing scheduled for Thursday. . . .
Robert M. O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia and a veteran scholar of issues related to academic freedom, said Monday that the legal fight over the manuscript "has profound implications" for academe. . . .
Mr. Proctor said Monday that lawyers for the tobacco company have sought for more than a year to obtain the manuscript to his planned book, tentatively titled "Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco." . . .
In a deposition filed in connection with the Florida case, he describes himself as one of only two professors of history in the nation who regularly testify against the tobacco industry, and alleged that "the tobacco industry has spent years trying to harass, intimidate, and use multiple legal means to prevent me from testifying in litigation." He said that his book "will contain previously unpublished information regarding tobacco-industry practices,"
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Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco
Tentative title of Robert N. Proctor's work-in-progress. RJR is battling in a Florida court for a sneak preview.
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