http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/lawsuit/falise_ii.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-ptobacco03mar03,0,86593.story?coll=sfla-news-palm http://tobacco.org/news/218577.html It took a Palm Beach County jury 90 minutes to decide Thursday that cigarette-maker Liggett wasn't responsible for the 2002 death of 72-year-old Boca Raton resident Leila Schwartz. Her widower, Leonard Schwartz, 79, said he wanted Liggett, which for decades made the unfiltered Chesterfield brand that Leila smoked for 50 years, to be punished for their actions. "I would've been happy to win money ... but more important was for [Liggett] to be liable for their lack of honesty," Schwartz said. "But the jury spoke and that's it." Liggett attorney Aaron Marks argued that for years before her death, Leila Schwartz suffered myriad health issues, such as depression, high blood pressure and cholesterol, a painkiller dependency and heart disease. Two heart attacks and triple bypass surgery, Marks said, ultimately killed Mrs. Schwartz. Doctors didn't consider a cancerous lung tumor found two months before Leila Schwartz's death to be terminal, Marks told jurors. Sun-Sentinel mstoddard@sun-sentinel.com (Missy Stoddard South Florida Sun-Sentinel Posted March 3 2006) Fri, 03 Mar 2006 05:00:00 GMT http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?T=marketsquote99_news.ht&s=AOnHTlBZ2QXNiZXN0 http://tobacco.org/news/58004.html The chairman of a compensation fund for sick asbestos workers said he intends to take cigarette companies to court again to make them pay a share of the health care costs for those workers who smoked. Speaking a day after a federal judge in Brooklyn declared a mistrial in the case, Robert Falise, the chairman of the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, said the jury's failure to reach a verdict was not a vindication for the tobacco industry. ``This was no great victory,'' Falise said. ``Let's do it again until we get it right.'' . . Falise insisted today that the jury was misled by erroneous instructions from the judge. Weinstein told jurors that the trust had to prove it was deceived by tobacco industry denials that smoking created a heightened health risk for asbestos workers. ``This jury got locked up on an error,'' Falise said. ``It was not necessary for us to prove that.'' Bloomberg News Fri, 26 Jan 2001 05:00:00 GMT http://biz.yahoo.com/apf/010125/brooklyn_t_2.html http://tobacco.org/news/57917.html A federal judge declared a mistrial Thursday in a high-stakes tobacco trial after getting a note from a juror warning deliberations were so strained that another juror had made a violent threat. The last of three hand-written notes sent out to U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein on the fifth day of deliberations read, ``Juror has made threat against other juror to kill'' if they have to be ``here much longer.'' Weinstein told lawyers he had to take the note seriously. ``I have an obligation to jurors to protect them,'' he said. One of the jurors, Aaron Barlow, later downplayed the note, telling reporters, ``It's not what was said.'' He said the jury had been deadlocked 10-2 for the tobacco industry since last week, and tensions were mounting against the two holdouts. ``Frankly, I think the whole case was a waste of time,'' said Barlow, 49, who was part of the majority. . . Lead defense attorney David Bernick said the mistrial was a victory for his clients. ``This was an enormous effort to establish a beachhead against the tobacco industry and it's failed completely,'' he said. Trust attorney Ed Westbrook said his side would seek a retrial. ``Obviously, we're disappointed, but we'll take another good run at the tobacco companies,'' he said. Associated Press Thu, 25 Jan 2001 05:00:00 GMT http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?s=AOmY8TBYfVG9iYWNj&T=marketsquote99_news.ht http://tobacco.org/news/57335.html Brown & Williamson Tobacco attorney David Bernick countered that the British American Tobacco Plc unit and other companies should not pay damages to the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, set up to pay off health claims brought by former asbestos workers. The cigarette makers never defrauded workers who filed claims for smoking-related illnesses, he said. Trust fund attorney Edward Westbrook urged jurors to pin responsibility on the companies for conspiring to lie to the public. He told jurors to ignore the industry's claims that it has reformed. ``You're going to have to get past an industry that admitted they were lying for decades to sell more cigarettes,'' Westbrook said in closing argument in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Westbrook claimed a smoker is 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer than the average person, an asbestos worker is five times more likely, and the two factors together increase the risk by 50 times through a process known as ``synergy.'' Bloomberg News Wed, 17 Jan 2001 05:00:00 GMT http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=BT-CO-20010117-009334.djml http://tobacco.org/news/57322.html The burden of paying claims to injured asbestos workers falls squarely on the trust fund set up to do just that. That was the closing argument made by an attorney representing cigarette manufacturers in the $136 million tobacco trial that concluded in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday. The case, brought by Johns Manville Corp.'s (JM) Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, will formally be given to the jury Friday. . . David Bernick, a lawyer for Brown & Williamson, a unit of British American Tobacco PLC (BTI), said that when the Trust calculated what it owed injured asbestos workers, it explicitly subtracted out such items as workers' exposure to tobacco. The reason, Bernick said, was that the Trust only wanted to pay for Johns Manville's portion of the liability of the sick employees. And even then, Bernick said, the Trust has only paid 10% of its share of the liability. So why then, Bernick asked, should the tobacco industry be obligated to pay for Manville's liability? "Is that tobacco money?" he said. The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition Wed, 17 Jan 2001 05:00:00 GMT http://www.newsday.com/ap/regional/ap824.htm http://tobacco.org/news/56007.html The chief executive of the nation's third-biggest cigarette maker, testifying in a case brought by sick asbestos workers, said Wednesday his company sought ''greater credibility with our critics'' when it acknowledged smoking causes diseases. ''Indeed we have changed our position, I think for the better,'' Nicholas G. Brookes, chairman and chief executive officer of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., testified in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Outside court after three hours of testimony, Brookes said the company wanted to boost its credibility to a point where others want ''to give us a seat at the table'' as the future of the industry is decided. ''We're as intent as anyone to solve these public health issues,'' he said. ''We want to be involved in the debate.'' . . He rejected suggestions that Brown & Williamson, maker of Kool and Lucky Strike and 18 other brands, had ever targeted asbestos workers with cigarette advertising. ''We did not,'' he said. He said he was told some advertising may have been directed toward blue collar workers. ''I checked ads that did run and satisfied myself that they never did run,'' he said. In 1981, the company dispatched workers to give away sample cigarettes outside locations where blue-collar workers might be found, but Brookes said the effort was conducted responsibly. Associated Press Wed, 27 Dec 2000 05:00:00 GMT http://www.newsday.com/coverage/current/news/tuesday/nd6920.htm http://tobacco.org/news/55088.html Wigand, the vice president for research and development at Brown & Williamson from 1989 until he was fired in 1993, told the jury that his former employer was not only aware of a unhealthy "synergy" between tobacco and asbestos, but hid that knowledge from consumers. He also detailed a company policy of hiding sensitive documents from possible litigation by shipping them to sister firms in Europe. Lawyers for the firm often vetted scientific documents, deleting "contentious statements." And employees were instructed: "If you are in doubt, verbal communication is probably best." He said superiors often faxed him documents at home with orders to throw them away once he had read them. A handwritten note on one such document, submitted yesterday as evidence, says, "destroy after reading." In a contentious cross-examination, which will continue today, Brown & Williamson lawyer David Bernick asserted Wigand was a disgruntled former employee who flip-flopped on prior claims about whether the firm used chemicals like ammonia to increase the amount of nicotine and make cigarettes more addictive. Newsday Tue, 12 Dec 2000 05:00:00 GMT http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=BT-CO-20001205-005760.djml http://tobacco.org/news/54799.html The tobacco industry shouldn't have to pay claims to injured asbestos workers if the trust fund set up to do just that hasn't met its own financial obligation to those workers, an industry attorney argued in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday. . . Bernick showed copies of claim forms in which the trust, in calculating what it owed individual workers, subtracted out what it calls "non-Manville" items such as tobacco influences and exposure to asbestos by companies other than Johns-Manville. "Johns-Manville only wanted to pay the Manville share," Bernick said in his opening statement Tuesday afternoon. In other words, the trust only paid for Johns-Manville's portion of the liability of the sick asbestos workers. And even then, Bernick said, the trust has only paid 10% of its share. "The trust has not yet paid out all of Manville's liability," Bernick said in court. "Did they pay for tobacco?" Bernick asked, shaking his head. "Did they pay for all of Manville's liability?" he asked, again shaking his head. "What's the problem in this case? It's a fairness case. Is it fair for tobacco to pay for Manville trust's liability problems? How does the trust answer this problem? They want tobacco companies to pay. They want to put us on the map." The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition Tue, 05 Dec 2000 05:00:00 GMT http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=BT-CO-20001205-004605.djml http://tobacco.org/news/54727.html 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. The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition Tue, 05 Dec 2000 05:00:00 GMT