It s certainly a victory on anything that really matters to us in the case. No lawsuit has so far succeeded in forcing a tobacco company to pay damages to smokers who claim they were harmed by the product. The decision bars litigation charging tobacco companies with failing to provide adequate warnings, and plaintiffs cannot argue that the use of healthy people in cigarette ads counteracts the federally mandated warning language. Tobacco companies called the decision a victory because plaintiffs will have to prove that industry misled the public about the dangers of tobacco.
Tobacco companies insist that there has never been any fraud on the part of the industry.
But Daynard says that there has only been one case that has gone to a jury dealing with fraud by the tobacco industry about the dangers of cigarettes. Recent information about public deception on the part of the tobacco companies was not available in that case, Daynard says. The defendants spin has historically been, no jury is going to be moved by the cries of a smoker who continued to smoke after the warnings came on. But that s because juries haven t seen what the tobacco companies have been doing. Now they re going to be confronted with the tobacco industry s behavior.