On the morning of November 13th, Chief Justice Morawetz virtually faced the lawyers representing the companies, governments and smokers involved in the settlement of Canada's tobacco claims.
The hearing had been scheduled for him to receive requests to tie up two loose ends on the multi-billion agreement which took effect at the end of August.
The first of these was a blanket order which would dismiss all of the lawsuits the companies were facing before the settlement came into effect. As explained by RBH's monitor, this blanket approach "will simplify the process for the termination and dismissal of the Pending Litigation by consolidating (i) the list of Pending Litigation matters into one schedule and (ii) the operative provisions into a single order for each proceeding."
The second was to give structure to the last-minute condition the judge introduced to his approval of the payments to the lawyers representing the Quebec class action. This involved a $50,000,000 share of the lawyers fees being set aside as a reserve to be given to injured smokers should it turn out that the number of claimants is greater than the moneys left over after the approved legal fees were deducted. The requested order sets out how this trust account will be managed, including some tax issues.
It only took about 10 minutes for the judge to be persuaded that the "one stop shop" and "easy to understand" order would facilitate the companies in having the litigation against them dismissed, and to learn that there were no objections from any parties to either motion. His formal approval is expected later today, and the orders will be linked at the end of this post.
A limited peek behind the curtain ...
Also filed with the court in connection with this hearing were updates by the three monitors on the steps that were being taken to implement the agreement. Among the useful nuggets in these reports was a report on the distribution of the $12.722 billion paid out to date. (Figures below are from page 37 of FTI's report)
Other than general statements about these issues being under discussion, the Monitors Reports provided very little information on the corporate restructuring that is intended to carve out the "Alternative Products Business", or on the establishment of the Cy-Pres Foundation that will be responsible for investing $1 billion in research.
Documents
- FTI (for Imperial Tobacco) Motion Record, Thirty-Third Monitor's Report
- EY (for Rothmans, Benson & Hedges) Motion Record, Thirty-First Monitor's Report
- Deloitte (for JTI-Macdonald) Motion Record, Thirty-First Monitor's Report
- Joint Factum of monitors and plan administrators
