Tobacco.org

• Tobacco Co Conduct Had No Effect On Trust Payments -Attny 

The conduct of the tobacco industry, regardless of how it has been perceived for decades, did not have an effect on how the old Johns-Manville Corp. set up a trust to reimburse workers who got sick from their exposure to asbestos, tobacco attorneys said in federal court Tuesday.

Tobacco attorneys argued that the risks of smoking were known long before Johns-Manville set up its trust and that the tobacco industry did not distort the public's knowledge about the risks of smoking and asbestos. . .

Ed Lombardi, a lawyer representing Philip Morris Cos. (MO) in the case, known as Falise, spent nearly an hour depicting the industry's conduct as normal, open and obliging toward research that links smoking to cancer. It was Lombardi's intent to tell the jury that the industry did not "distort the body of public knowledge about asbestos-tobacco synergy," as the plaintiff alleges.

In fact, Lombardi said, tobacco companies said very little outside of confidential internal documents about the issues of asbestos. The companies, he said, even funded research on asbestos and its effects on people who smoke. That research, Lombardi said, turned up no major findings, but the fact that the industry pursued such research illustrated its intent was not to mislead the public.

Jump to full article »