Tobacco Firms Must Hand Over Databases Supreme Court Ruling To Quicken Sorting Of Documents, Helping Plaintiffs
Just five days after tobacco companies won a major legal victory, the Supreme Court handed the industry a potentially big defeat: Cigarette makers will have to turn over computer databases to sick smokers who are suing them.
Tuesday’s action in a Minnesota case could pave the way for hundreds of smokers’ lawsuits to proceed more quickly, by helping them assess some 9 million pages of internal industry documents they hope to use as evidence.
“This is a huge blow to the tobacco industry’s attempts to cover up what they knew and when they knew it,” said Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, who is seeking to recover state Medicaid costs for treating sick smokers.
Humphrey called the high court’s action “monumental for us because it will help us finally get to the truth.”
But tobacco companies pledged to oppose efforts by any other lawsuit to use the databases, and called Minnesota’s win purely symbolic.
“There are no smoking guns in the databases,” said R.J. Reynolds attorney Dan Donahue. “This is an index of almost totally irrelevant documents.”
At issue is an accusation by Minnesota - echoed in other lawsuits filed nationwide - that tobacco companies manipulated nicotine in cigarettes to hook smokers.
The high court’s action comes at a key time. Last week, a federal appeals court sided with cigarette makers in refusing to let millions of smokers join together in one massive class-action against them.
So the smokers instead are filing smaller lawsuits in state courts nationwide. But they had estimated it would take several years of simply combing tobacco archives before they’d be ready for trial.
The computer databases could cut that research time to one year, speeding to trial potentially hundreds of lawsuits and saving cash-strapped smokers thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees, said Richard Daynard of the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University.
Once-secret industry documents show tobacco executives discussing ways to manipulate nicotine in cigarettes. When Minnesota requested additional documents about nicotine addiction to bolster its case, cigarette makers sent those documents mixed in truckloads of papers on tobacco beetles and other irrelevant data.
The Minnesota trial judge estimated that sorting through the estimated 9 million pages would take state attorneys nine years - if five lawyers spent 12 hours a day, five days a week on the task.
So he ordered the companies to turn over computer databases created to sort and identify the documents.
The companies argued the databases were the property of their attorneys.
But the Supreme Court, without comment, turned down the appeal Tuesday.
Minnesota is one of eight states seeking to recover Medicaid expenses from five cigarette makers: R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, Liggett Group and Lorillard. Liggett has settled some of those suits. The other states suing the same five companies in separate lawsuits are Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia.
Tobacco stocks dropped on the news, with R.J. Reynolds’ parent RJR Nabisco closing down 50 cents at $33.12 a share.
xxxx TRUCKLOADS OF PAPER The judge ordered the release of computer data after estimating that sorting through the estimated 9 million pages of tobacco company documents would take state attorneys nine years - if five lawyers spent 12 hours a day, five days a week on the task.