Jump to full article: New Zealand Herald, 2006-02-11
Author: Nicola Boyes
Intro: The 56-year-old has buried two sisters to lung cancer.
She had ducked out for a smoke after the stress of giving evidence for the estate of one of those sisters, in a landmark case for damages against British American Tobacco NZ and W.D. & H.O. Wills NZ.
When her sister Janice Pou was stressed she could smoke between 50 and 60 cigarettes a day. She died from lung cancer in September 2002.
Now her children Brandon and Kasey, as executors of her estate, are finishing her legal battle, claiming $310,966 in damages from the tobacco companies.
Mrs Toomata has come up from Invercargill to give her evidence and watched on the television news her sister speak from the grave. . . .
Her sister tried at least 20 times to give up, each attempt a "spectacular failure".
Janice Pou's older sister, Margaret Karipa, a smoker, died from lung cancer on October 31, 1998.
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