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LAWSUIT: His lawyers say Philip Morris Inc. knew its product was dangerous and addictive.
Jump to full article: Riverside (CA) Press-Enterprise, 2005-03-08
Author: JOHN WELSH / The Press-Enterprise
Intro: A 51-year-old Moreno Valley man should have known the dangers of cigarettes while he was a smoker, an attorney for Philip Morris Inc. said Monday in a downtown Riverside courtroom.
One reason is that the man's religious elders warned him smoking is harmful to the body, a human temple, said Walter Cofer, a lead counsel for the tobacco giant.
Former truck driver Bruce Coolidge is suing Philip Morris Inc. for ruining his health. . . .
On Monday, one of Coolidge's attorneys placed old Philip Morris in-house memos on an overhead screen and read portions of the memos, some dating to the mid-1950s that addressed company executives' views about cigarettes' addictiveness. The attorney, Shawn Khorrami of Van Nuys, highlighted certain paragraphs in an effort to show executives knew how harmful their product was to consumers such as his client
If study results show nicotine addiction is on the same levels as caffeine and morphine, "we will want to bury it," Khorrami read from one of the memos.
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