Tobacco companies are planning to rest their case in about two weeks. The consumer fraud suit, filed by the Minnesota attorney general and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, seeks to recoup smokers' medical costs. In a newly released Philip Morris memo, when two different studies came out in the early 1980s showing the dangers of smoking, the cigarette maker's first inclination was to smear the scientists and discredit the findings. A lawyer suggested that company officials should tell the media that the author of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing airway damage in nonsmokers from ambient tobacco smoke, was himself an anti-smoking advocate. An obsession with wording also emerges in the industry documents.
Lawyers repeatedly remind company officials and scientists about ongoing lawsuits.
In one series of exchanges between executives of the Tobacco Institute, they grapple over how to refer to minors in literature about youth smoking. The concern was to ensure that youths 18 and over did not feel that anti-youth smoking messages include them. Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick said pending tobacco industry motions request that some of the documents remain protected, yet the industry appears to be working with the congressional committee on the Internet release. Jeffrey Jones, a Reynolds lawyer, told the court the tobacco industry requested that about 300 documents containing trade secrets and information about ongoing litigation written by outside lawyers be withheld from release. A committee news release said 400 documents have not been published on the Internet.