Day 253: "Every party has an ending."

At 11:17 this morning, the trial of the combined Blais-Létourneau tobacco class actions came to an end.

Although the 90 minute hearing that lead to this end did not give much of a sense of occasion, it did capture the not-always-tasteful flavour of the last 33 months of trial. There was eloquence. There was eye-rolling. There was anger. There was laughter.  And not all of it from in front of the bar!

Money comes first.

The first issue discussed was the earnings of the companies.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Imperial Tobacco had refused to join in on an arrangement that would shelter their financial statements from public view should Justice Riordan impose punitive damages against them. (The capacity to pay is a criteria in any assessment of these damages).

A partial change of heart appears to have taken place, for today they were adopting the same approach they had earlier rejected: substituting complete financial statements for a top line statement of pre-tax and post-tax earnings. One set of confidential exhibits were soon swapped for another. (Taking the cake of reduced evidence, they are nonetheless not relinquishing their eating rights to keep the number permanently from view).

There was no agreement on what should constitute an assessment of the income of the companies. Pre-tax or post tax? With or without consideration of the money that they were paying in penalties under an agreement with the federal government?

(As a result of their settlements, Imperial Tobacco and Rothmans Benson and Hedges make annual payments in the range of 3% of their income. According to these same agreements ITL earned $1,29 billion in 2007 and RBH earned $671 million in 2008.)

Justice Riordan wanted details on how the settlement payments to governments were presented on the financial statements. The way Simon Potter defined these provided one of the trial's more droll moments. "This doesn't have to do with smuggling, it has to do with mis-labelling."  It takes a special kind of moxie to present the absence of tax stamps as primarily a labelling issue!

The sur-rebuttals

The real meat of this morning's hearings was the defendants' rebuttal to the plaintiffs' rebuttal of their defence to their claim. Or, as the French apparently say, the "surplique".

On behalf of Imperial Tobacco, Ms. Deborah Glendinning presented a reasonably punchy version of their key arguments: that there was no evidence linking any harms to any individuals, that neither of the two forms of causation - conduct causation or disease causation- had been established, that low-tar/light cigarettes were supported by government, that the companies' polling on people's beliefs about smoking were not reliable as trial evidence.

She ended, however, with something of a kicker. She revealed for the first time the reason that Imperial Tobacco had decided against calling any Quebec smokers to testify (after months of playing coy about their plans to prolong the trial with this testimony).

"I will explain to you why we did not call them. We went to the Court of Appeal. They established the principle that we thought needed to be established. It is a class action but this does not stop the plaintiffs from having to prove individual causation and individual injury. They said that was the plaintiffs' burden and they didn't see how it could be done when they had not called [any class members].

With that judgement we no longer required class member evidence because we knew they could not meet the burden and that there is thus no option but to dismiss the case."

The Bou Malhab refrain

Mr. Guy Pratte provided JTI's response in a similarly condensed style. As Ms. Glendinning had done, he encouraged the judge to see that the 2011 Bou Malhab decision of the Supreme Court prevented a ruling on behalf of a group of smokers.

Mr. Pratte has had particular responsibility in this trial to debunk the work of plaintiff' expert epidemiologist, Jack Siemiatycki. He did so again today.

It did not matter, he said, that the defendants' experts had come up with a similar estimate of the number of people whose lung cancer could be attributed to smoking. They had done so doing different methods -- top down, not bottom up.

He seemed to suggest that the criticisms of Mr. Siemiatycki's approach should prevent the judge from accepting any calculation - even one by other experts. "If the number is invalid statistically, and the range is unknown, then it cannot be validated by another number." 

(André Lespérance, who was given the last word in the trial, gave Justice Riodan a brief but strongly worded argument that Mr. Pratte's analysis was incorrect).

What is justified in a free and democratic society

Mr. Potter, the doyen of tobacco lawyers in this case, took exception to the way that the plaintiffs had referred to the use of criminal law powers by the federal government in its ban on tobacco advertising. (Although he now represents Rothmans, Benson and Hedges, he worked for Imperial Tobacco in fighting these laws in the 1980s and 1990s).

He reminded the judge that the Supreme Court had said the first federal law had gone too far - and that this law had explicitly allowed for sponsorship promotions. For these and other reasons, he felt that using these laws as a basis to judge previous industry actions was not justified.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

The sporadic "thank yous" that have been directed to Justice Riordan over the past few sitting days became a chorus today, as everyone gave their parting words.

It was an awkward chorus, but one expressed in sincere ambiguity. "These have been emotional times," said Simon Potter. "It is impossible that everyone will not be left with very abiding and strong memories of the time here."  Mr. Lespérance said that the trial would "linger in people's memories."

Justice Riordan expressed appreciation to the support staff and tokens of appreciation were presented on behalf of the lawyers by the (always gracious) François Grondin. The lawyers were also thanked by the judge for their diligence and professionalism.

"I fear that the hardest work will start in the next few minutes," he said before announcing the AMEN to every trial:  "Judgment reserved."

As I packed my computer away, I watched the two lines of lawyers cross paths and shake hands. Just like a hockey game!

Day 252: Wrapping up... but not yet wrapped up.

Over the past two months, there has been much said during the closing arguments of the defendant tobacco companies that struck me as inconsistent with the evidence gathered over the past years.

So much so that I thought the plaintiffs might take more than one of the four days set aside for rebuttal to respond to the mischief that has, to these eyes at least, been attempted.

Perhaps they thought that the defendants' idiosyncratic version of events was self-evident to Justice Riordan - or perhaps they sensed the judge's impatience to get this thing over with. For whatever reason, their rebuttal was limited to today's hearing.

It made for an intensive review of the key aspects of the trial. An observant colleague pointed out to me that if there were one day of hearing to select as an overview of the trial, today was it.

But first, the substitute

The day began with the (re-)introduction of another team-member on Imperial Tobacco's bench. Mr. Eric Préfontaine, from Osler's Montreal office replaced Ms. Suzanne Côté as the team's expert in Quebec law. (Most of Imperial's counsel are from Toronto). His introduction was the only direct reference to Ms. Côté's dramatic reassignment in late November to Canada's Supreme Court.

I noted that Mr. Préfontaine did not take Ms. Côté's place on the front bench - but sat discreetly in the third row!

The opening volleys

As Mr. Préfontaine's introduction and a few other introductory issues were dealt with, plaintiff lawyer André Lespérance stood near the lectern facing the judge, seemingly impatient to begin his final comments in this trial.

Mr. Lespérance is usually the voice of polite understatement. Today, however, he seemed to be in touch with his firebrand. For 40 minutes, he landed successive verbal punches on the industry's arguments against collective recovery. So fast, so furious, so French that my fingers could not keep up!

Collective recovery in this trial takes a population approach, and one dependent on a population health epidemiological approach. It seems like most of the companies' efforts in this trial have been aimed at ensuring that this collective approach is denied in favour of individual assessments.

Mr. Lespérance put this strategy in the context of the companies' decades' long refusal to accept the epidemiological facts that smoking caused disease. As he presented it, the companies' criticisms of the analytic model used by the plaintiffs' expert, Jack Siemiatycki, were a similar bad faith effort. (Mr. Siemiatycki's approach is now available as an article published this summer in the American Journal of Public Health.)

In the end, Mr. Lespérance said, the calculation of how many people had been harmed was relatively simple. "It is a multiple of only two numbers: how many deaths there were and how many are due to smoking."

He pointed out that, for their many and detailed methodological quibbles, the defendant experts had come to similar conclusions to Mr. Siemiatcycki: they agreed that cancer registries were the right source to establish how many people were sick, and that the proportion of these diseases due to smoking was in the range of 90% to 95%.

With almost all lung cancers due to smoking -- and with the "gift to the defendants" of a minimum smoking history of 5 pack years - it was wasted effort to look for other possible reasons for a smokers' lung cancer.

"Smoking is the Mount Everest of lung cancer," he reminded Justice Riordan. Even the cancers caused by asbestos - "which is so dangerous that it has been banned" - were only a Mount Royal in comparison. It was the defendants' expert who had once calculated that among those exposed to both asbestos and smoking, it was tobacco use which was 5 times more likely to cause lung cancer.

All the experts had agreed that about 90% to 95% of lung cancers were caused by smoking. The time spent in arguing how to get there had been a "useless debate" which wasted months of trial time. (This was one of several not-so-veiled references to the plaintiff's allegations that the companies abused trial procedures in the way they strung out the trial).

He encouraged the judge to see that further trials to establish individual eligibility would worsen the situation: "The defence is saying we should have decades of trial to find the 5% of lung cancer cases that are not due to tobacco."  To require victims to go through this would be "a denial of justice".

Either cheats or liars -- and other moral faults

Well within the hour, Philippe Trudel replaced Mr. Lespérance in the centre of the room. He began by pointing out some contradictions in the defendants' logic: "They say that everyone saw the warnings on the ads, but that there is no proof that anyone saw the ads." ..."Health messages were supposed to have influenced them to not start smoking or to convince them to stop smoking; on the other hand advertising had no influence on smoking."

The companies provided other forms of contradictory messages -- as when they insisted on attribution of health messages. "The public had two messages -- that the government doesn't want you to smoke, and the companies are not in agreement [with health concerns]"

In quick succession, Mr. Trudel addressed several marketing practices which the companies had tried to reframe in recent weeks. The false reassurance of putting filters on cigarettes was not a new cause of action, he pointed out, but had been included in the reports prepared by the plaintiffs' marketing expert, Richard Pollay. 

The industry's blurring of a distinction between reduced tar cigarettes and the marketing term "lights" was one that the government had not endorsed. Nor was the use of lifestyle imagery to promote brands. Justice Riordan was pointed to the testimony of former Health Minister Marc Lalonde to this end, and to other examples of government concern.

The defendants' only marketing expert - David Soberman - had said that the tobacco companies used the same approach to their marketing as producers of other consumer goods did. Just because "everyone did it" did not mean it was okay, said Mr. Trudel. "Not all products are on the same level. If the question is whether it is right to associate a product which causes death with health, prestige and sports, the answer must be 'no.'  This is not a good practice."  He stressed that it was under the criminal law powers of the federal government that tobacco marketing was now banned.

As Mr. Lespérance had done with lung disease, Mr. Trudel defended the use of population data to quantify the number of addicted smokers, and to establish whose tobacco use can be considered the result of addiction. He reviewed the criteria for eligibility in the Létourneau case- one must have started smoking by 1994, have smoked on a daily basis in 1998 and to still be smoking in 2005. 

Is it a fault to sell to youth?

The plaintiffs have not argued that the marketing of cigarettes to younger people is a distinct fault, but have presented it more as further in the spectrum of the misinformation or absence of information given to consumers. 

It was as Mr. Trudel was pointing out the contradictions between the companies' stated positions and their marketing practices with respect to youth that Justice Riordan asked one of the more challenging questions put to the plaintiffs.

The judge pointed out that for most of the period, the legal age to sell cigarettes was 16, and that advertising was allowed by law, even though voluntary restrictions were in place.  In such circumstances "what is the fault of reaching people under 18?"

Mr. Trudel said that because young people had a lesser capacity to assess risk, and because of the companies' and societies' view that this was unacceptable, it should be seen as a "moral fault." 

Moreover, under Article 1457 of Quebec's Civil Code, "it is not because it was not forbidden that it was permitted."

Six Fallacies

Bruce Johnston concluded the plaintiffs' rebuttal by linking his comments to the outline he had provided at the beginning of the trial.

Thirty-three months ago, he had said that the companies would argue that they were not at fault because: 1) cigarettes are a legal product, 2) that "everybody knew" that smoking was dangerous, 3) that smoking is a choice, 3) that you can't prove that it killed any individual person, 5) that the government is responsible and 6) that the smoker, the victim, is to blame. 

"The pervasive fallacy of the legal product."

Cigarettes might be legal, but they were not endorsed by government. Mr. Johnston pointed out that even when the Supreme Court overturned earlier court decisions (and the industry's view) that the federal regulator had no constitutional right to constrain cigarette marketing, it noted that the goal of government was to "eradicate the practice" of smoking. 

He derided Simon Potter's suggestion that the companies were "obedient regulatees" and that they had little effect against a continually declining rate of smoking. "With different decisions [by the companies] there would have been a different history. The incidence falling could have happened 20 years before, or even 30 years before."

Nor did the status of cigarettes under federal law change the obligations under Quebec's civil law, and its codification of standards of behaviour that apply to manufacturers.

"In selling a product there will always be a risk-benefit analysis. Some products are so dangerous that there is no countervailing benefit - and no reasonable person would subject anyone to the dangers of consuming a product when it is not going to be of any use to them. I don't see how you can justify putting a product such as this one on the market, knowing what we have known for some time."

Is the legal status of cigarettes something that should be changed? Would finding that the sale of cigarettes is a fault be an appropriate decision in light of current tobacco laws?  Mr. Johnston suggested as much by referring Justice Riordan to a famous U.S. Court decision that struck down decades of commonly-accepted and legal behaviour: the 'separate but equal' treatment of Black and White Americans. (Brown v. Board of Education) For a time courts may not be ready to act, but after they do so "it seems the most obvious thing."

Everybody knew -- but what exactly?

In perhaps the strongest attacks on any of the industry's experts, Mr. Johnston suggested that he historians hired by the tobacco companies to testify about the common knowledge of the harms of smoking had been "duped" or worse. 

Jacques Lacoursière was dismissed out of hand - but David Flaherty came in for some unflattering reminders -- of his arrogance about other historians, of his hubris and unwillingness to admit that the tasks he had performed fell short of what a "good historian" might have done. 

"What credibility can we give to an expert who, like a great number of experts presented by the defence, had their sources chosen for them and refused to consult sources that they knew about and they knew were relevant?"

Among the press clippings that were the source documents used by Jacques Lacoursière to substantiate his report were over 10,000 tobacco advertisements, said Mr. Johnston. None of these had been referred to, or given any weight.

Raymond Duch was the third industry expert to testify about common knowledge. Mr. Johnston described his conclusions as "if you know anything, you know everything" and compared the polling answers he relied on as comparable to people acknowledging that butter, or air pollution or radiation could be harmful to health.

"If you are to say that knowing something can be risky for you is enough [to assume risk], there is very little left of the manufacturers' duty to inform."   The law compels disclosure of all the risks, he said. "The more risky, the more explicit the warning must be."

(Justice Riordan was also reminded that Mr. Duch had not received the industry's internal polling - even after asking for it).

The idea that "everybody knew" did not apply to the witnesses who testified at this trial - most of whom, Mr. Johnston pointed out, had not known. (He referred to a table prepared as an aid for argument, but which was not displayed). "Very few thought it was addictive - or that it caused any disease at all. How does that square with the theory that people had knowledge?"
 

Trapped? It's up to you to crawl out

"This industry preys upon the most vulnerable people in society and hopes to trap them." To those it traps, it takes no responsibility, Mr. Johnston said, even though it has enticed them into the trap and encouraged them to rationalize the fact of being trapped.

An example of this was Ms. Létourneau's experience in small claims court, where Imperial Tobacco had held her responsible for not responding to the warnings about addiction after she had become an addicted smoker.  (He also pointed out that the nature of small claims courts meant that a judgement there could not be held against her in future proceedings, although the companies had made frequent suggestions that it should).

Bringing individual members to testify would have been a form of victim-blaming, suggested Mr. Johnston -- or certainly would have opened them to "a withering examination of blame and yielded nothing of use."

It was not uncommon, in Mr. Johnston's experience, for class actions to be decided without direct testimony from witnesses. He pointed to cases that his firm had managed - on access to abortion, on bank fees, on consumer credit - had involved no testimony beyond discovery, as had happened with Ms. Létourneau and Mr. Blais.

(Mr. Johnston pointed to other sections of the Quebec Civil Code that narrowed the ability of a manufacturer to shift acceptance of risk to the user, i.e. Article 1477 and 1478). 

The rebuttal ended with an appeal to the nature of addiction, and its effect on people's capacity to act. Addiction did not make it impossible to quit, said Mr. Johnston, but it was at the heart of the problem of smoking.

"It is the disease that leads to other diseases."

At the end of the day, Imperial Tobacco signaled that it will submit further written arguments on time limitations (prescription) and possibly comments in reply to today's events. The other two companies said their comments would be limited to a few minutes only. Justice Riordan adjourned the court until Thursday morning. 

(This blog has been back-dated to provide consistency in indexing)

Supreme news and Supremely good news

The Montreal tobacco trials are a breath away from the finish line. Only the rebuttal ("replique") and a potential re-rebuttal ("surplique") remain. The last stage begins next Monday.

In this short entr'acte some noteworthy events:

Big news

The appointment of Imperial Tobacco's counsel, Suzanne Côté, to Canada's Supreme Court was much in the news. Some media reports mentioned this case, and that she had included tobacco companies among her clients. Most mentioned the talents that have been very present during this trial: - as one observer put it in the Globe and Mail she is an "extremely aggressive advocate"!

Interesting times ahead. This case will almost certainly be taken up by the Supreme Court, but likely not for some years. Perhaps the court will also be asked to review decisions related to whether Imperial Tobacco's defence team abused court procedures in managing this case. (Justice Riordan has said as much - and the plaintiffs have identified a series of actions that they want him to rule on, although he has said he will not do so until after the main questions have been decided. See rulings of May 2, 2012 and May 15, 2013.

Good news

The plaintiffs have opened their database of exhibits and transcripts to the public. The web-site where you can access these documents is: https://tobacco.asp.visard.ca.

It is an amazing resource - and a real benefit for researchers.  When you arrive at the splash page, just press on the bar that says "Accès direct à l'information/Direct access to information"

Enjoy!  (In the coming weeks I will be posting lists of useful or interesting documents. If you have any specific inquiries about using the database or about the trial records, feel free to e-mail me at the contact address above.)

The trial resumes on December 8th.

Day 251: Not a secret deal so much as a deal about secrets

Over the years it has been my experience that when normally adversarial parties utter the phrase "an agreement has been reached" there is a good chance that the agreement in question is one that I may not like.

And so it was today at the Montreal tobacco trials, as it was revealed that the plaintiffs and two of the defendant companies had agreed to keep the companies' financial records sealed.

There was a time when the earnings of two of the companies - Imperial Tobacco and Rothmans, Benson and Hedges - were a matter of public record because they were included in reports to shareholders filed with Canadian stock exchanges. Researchers and policy makers, too, could use this information to better understand the economics of this trade.

This public disclosure ended over the past decade, after the Canadian branches became wholly-owned subsidiaries of multinationals. Now only global-level aggregated data is available and Canadian financial results are apparently viewed by these defendants as a high-level secret.

A transparent capacity to pay

The general Court rule is that all trial exhibits are public unless a judge agrees to a request to keep them confidential. Earlier in the trial, the plaintiffs opposed all such requests, and the rulings which resulted suggest to me that Justice Riordan has a general preference for disclosure.

But as this trial draws to an end, the parties have negotiated "compromise" solutions regarding the financial records. (This financial information is required in any assessment of punitive damages, as Article 1621 of the Civil Code of Quebec directs the consideration of the wealth or "patrimonial situation" of a faulty party. )

Not telling, but asking

A few weeks ago, Justice Riordan made it clear that the decision about what could or could not be made public was one which belonged to him, and that he did not want to be considered a rubber stamp to any agreements made between parties.

Sensitive to this, perhaps, lawyers representing JTI-Macdonald and Rothmans, Benson and Hedges today presented a longish explanation of why he should accept an agreement to disclose the rolled-up earnings figures, but not any other information, such as gross revenues or expenses.

Justice Riordan had a solution of his own to propose. In a twink of an eye, the financial records of RBH were removed from the court record and replaced with only the "releasable" numbers. A somewhat more complicated arrangement - but to the same end - was set for JTI. (Previous discussions on the JTI situation have been partically disclosed).

Only Imperial Tobacco remained unwilling to reach such an agreement. Suzanne Côté, looking like she had torn herself from her sickbed for the occasion, gave Justice Riordan several reasons - and a handful of legal precedents - to support eternal secrecy for any financial information about her client. (Even under the weather she packs a pretty good wallop!)

And the public interest?

Plaintiff lawyer André Lespérance suggested to Justice Riordan that the two agreements arrived at reflected a "balancing" of competing public interests - the need for transparency and the beed to safeguard business information in a competitive market. He said it was concern for a competitive market that should encourage the judge to rule against ITL's request, and to impose a similar level of public release as had been agreed-to by the others.

I think this was the first time that the plaintiffs have appealed to the competitive cigarette market as something that should be respected.  It was a peculiar and disquieting moment.

Back to prescription

There are a number of laws which have been invoked in this trial -- the Quebec Civil Code and the Civil Code of Lower Canada, the Consumer Protection Act , the Quebec Charter of Rights and the Tobacco-related Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act.

These laws allow for different types of faults, different types of damages, different rules on time limitations. That is to say, there are lots of things to argue when trying to settle the question of when the companies can no longer be held liable for any damages simply because the events took place in the too distant past.

As if this were not complicated enough, some of the companies are arguing the date at which the three-year clock should start is September 1994, after which government-mandated warnings about specific diseases appeared on all cigarette packages.

This discussion has been dispersed over the past weeks and today Philippe Trudel provided the plaintiffs' response to the industry's positiosn.

He focused his comments on the inclusion that should be granted to people who became injured after the initial suit was filed (in 1998).

In support of his position, he referred Justice Riordan to the way the issue was managed by the court in a recent case involving bank charges. (Left unstated, but known to all was that the same plaintiffs had, mostly successfully, fought that case through to the Supreme Court.)

A final comb-through of exhibits

Even after several rounds of discussions on the status of certain exhibits, a number of documents remained in limbo. Among these were several which had been marked with a "reserve" because there had not been enough information when they were first proposed to satisfy a decision to rule them in or rule them out.

Again, an agreeable solution had been found between the plaintiffs and Rothmans, Benson and Hedges and JTI.  As a result, a number of exhibits had their status clarified without Justice Riordan's intervention (some were removed, some were given status as 2M documents, some became full exhibits).

And again, it was ITL that preferred to take their chances on a decision by Justice Riordan. Returning for this discussion was ITL's counsel, Nancy Roberts, who competed with plaintiff counsel Gabrielle Gagne for a thumbs up from the judge.

Ms. Roberts won some and she lost some. Included in her successes was what I think could only be described as a pyrrhic victory.

The plaintiffs had wanted to use a 2000 exchange of correspondence between BAT and the UK House of Commons to establish when the parent company accepted certain health consequences of smoking. Ms. Roberts convinced Justice Riordan to strike down this exhibit... only to have him request a more challenging proof:

"Now, I'd like to have an admission from you as to the dates when each company first admitted that smoking caused lung cancer, emphysema, all those throat cancers, and addiction."

Given that the proof closed in 1998, I wonder what they will come up with?

The final days of this trial will take place on December 8, 11, 12 and possibly 15th. Already people are being asked to clean off their desks to make way for the next trial to use this beautiful room....

This post has been back-dated to allow for consistency in indexing

Day 250: The Defence Rests

Today was one of the most pleasant days to sit and watch the tobacco companies present their defence during the Montreal tobacco trials. And not just because it was the last one!

It was up to the Craig Lockwood to present the reasons why fault should not be found with the way that Imperial Tobacco marketed its products, or with the way the companies worked together over decades.

When Ms. Glendinning and Ms. Côté earlier presented ITL's case, it mostly sounded like a reading of their written arguments into the record.

Craig Lockwood

Mr. Lockwood chose a more conversational approach. As Justice Riordan engaged with frequent small interventions, it was often a dialogue -- and an interesting one to observe.

(Justice Riordan at times gives the impression of mentoring this young-ish lawyer. When the others overstate their case, the judge scowls -- but when Mr. Lockwood does so, he is corrected and given an opportunity to restate his position.)

Playing dominoes

One of the plaintiffs' arguments is that the cigarettes are so overwhelmingly harmful that to sell them should be censured under the provisions of Quebec law which forbid people from harming one another.

ITL lawyers have aligned this idea against other parts of the case, suggesting that if Justice Riordan does not accept that selling cigarettes is a fault, then he cannot find fault with the way they were sold. They seem to have identified this as a big weak argument that can be pushed in a way to make other concerns disappear.

Craig Lockwood took this approach as he addressed the evidence of his clients' activities with young smokers or new smokers.

"All  of the arguments collapse on the starting premise that marketing cigarettes is wrongful. If that falls away, the others will fall away."

Let me be explicit. Cigarette ads are not implicitly misleading.

Mr. Lockwood took issue with the idea that lifestyle advertising or other forms of advertising could have left smokers with a false impression about the products they were buying.  "Lifestyle advertising is not particular to tobacco. The fact of lifestyle advertising cannot be a fault." 

And trying to increase the social acceptability of smoking and make people think it was an okay thing to do? "That's what advertising is. That's what it does."

Moreover, there was no evidence to support that marketing had a negative impact. "You don't have a class member or a fact witness who said "this is the impression I got".

He said that the federal government had "dismissed out of hand" the idea that lifestyle advertising should be constrained - citing from a 1977 memo by a senior Health and Welfare Canada official who felt an advertiser "cannot be charged with misleading advertising because he puts his best foot forward and avoids mentioning the possible consequences of using his product." (Exhibit 20137.3)

(The fact that only a year earlier the Minister of Health had written the companies to request that they "Eliminat[e] promotional activities that depict a lifestyle, person or environment instead of being confined to a description of the product" (Exhibit 50001) seems to have slipped Mr. Lockwood's memory!)

The role of government underpinned several of Mr. Lockwood's submission:
* The government was the one who started, and who asked the companies to spend a disproportionate share of their marketing dollars on light cigarettes.
* The government protected the use of "light" as a term that could be used on cigarette packages (Exhibit 21333).
* It advised Canadians to use lower tar brands to reduce lung cancer risk as late as 2002. (Exhibit 30037).
* By allowing advertising, the government allowed the spillover of ads onto a young market.

Innocent until proven guilty. Until it is banned by law, it is not wrong.

As Mr. Lockwood's arguments began to coalesce around the view that as long as tobacco advertising was not banned, there could be moral issues but no legal fault assigned to the way it was sold, Justice Riordan raised the issue of the voluntary code and internal policies of the companies to not target youth.

Only to the extent that it is socially inappropriate, Mr. Lockwood replied. "It can't be the purpose of the courts to be a moral litigant. .... This court is here to sit in judgment of the law, not of the morality." There should be no legal response "until it rises to the level of being wrongful in law."

To this, Justice Riordan gave no indication of agreement.

Viva viva voce!

Mr. Lockwood reminded Justice Riordan that the evidence that had been provided by former employees of Imperial Tobacco was markedly different than the written records from the marketing department.

"Their [the plaintiffs] argument rests on a documentary records," he said before giving his reasons why what was written by marketing officials should not be considered as reliable as the later recall of the men who had directed the work.

Project Viking (which, among other things tried to figure out how to change smokers' views about smoking and health) was "a conceptual project that never extended into marketing."

The writings of Bob Bexon were "theoretical reflections" of a man who was on the outs with his boss.

None of the ITL witnesses had been able to identify that "CRY" stood for "Consumer Research Youth". This shows how unimportant this area of research was, Mr. Lockwood said -- much less than 1% of the total research effort.

The visuals

Curiously, very few ads were shown during the first years of the trial. It was only in these final arguments that there has been a competitive display of how cigarettes were advertised.

Cigarette advertising
as presented by
Mr. Lockwood.

Mr. Lockwood showed a half dozen black-and-white versions of ads, most of which showed only the cigarette package. He contrasted these with the "snippet" or "handful of documents" that the plaintiffs presented during their closing arguments. It would be wrong for Justice Riordan to think that the more contentious ads shown earlier were representative of the company's marketing.

The plaintiffs didn't even provide information on when the ads ran -- in which publications or for how long -- let alone whether anyone actually saw them.

He pointed out that the companies had constrained their marketing activities -- putting ads only in publications with a 75% adult readership (later 85%), and took themselves out of the broadcast market.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Mr. Lockwood referred to a few issues in which he said the companies were put in the position of being condemned for taking actions that they would be condemned for not taking. 

They had not assessed whether their ads would appeal to youth -- but would they not have been pilloried for doing research on youth? Their financing of research was considered suspect - but would they not have been condemned for not supporting research? Their programs to discourage sales to youth by retailers was criticized -- but so would the absence of any such programs.

Not a conspiracy. Just businesses and trade organizations.

Mr. Lockwood limited his presentation on why the companies could not be considered to have "conspired" to impede smokers from learning of the dangers of smoking to the role of inter-corporate structures.

The CTMC, he said, was only a "trade organization" and was separate from the company. "It has its own executive, its own employees." Even if there were wrongdoings by the CTMC, they "cannot be immediately visited upon the companies."

Exhibit 20326

He showed again a document that has been much-cited by the defence  -- a memo from Judy LaMarsh asking the companies to make a joint representation to the 1963 Conference on tobacco. Each of the companies has presented this as a request by government for the companies to create an ongoing coordinating agency. Be careful what you ask for, indeed!

(Justice Riordan said that he thought "it makes very little difference" who started the CTMC.)

He reminded Justice Riordan of the parliamentary privilege that was claimed for the positions taken by the companies before parliamentary committee. If the judge were to find them relevant, he should keep in mind that they were not "akin to a media event" and that they should be "judged by the standards of the day".  (Was lying to parliament more acceptable in 1964 than in 2014? good question!)

As for the international tobacco organizations ICOSI and INFOTAB which had been "dragged into" the proceedings - these clearly had little impact in Canada. He pointed out that ITL witnesses could not remember what they were -- and that minutes of CTMC meetings show that actions recommended by ICOSI was considered "inappropriate" for Canada.

To support his view that ITL was independent of its (now fully owning) parent, BAT, Mr. Lockwood referred to the share distribution.  BAT never had de jure control of the company.

Justice Riordan did not let him get away with this one, but was very gentle in pointing out that the shares owned by BAT-controlled entities exceeded 50% and that in a publicly traded company, the threshold for controlling interest was much below 50%.

Exhibit 2000.1

Mr. Lockwood had the sense to back down. "I am not a corporate lawyer."

He pointed to the high-level disagreement about Project Day as an example of ITL's independence.

And then it was over

Given this would be his last opportunity to address the judge, Mr. Lockwood expressed his appreciation for the opportunity to appear over the past two and a half years. Justice Riordan, in turn, thanked Mr. Lockwood for his efforts. It was a nice moment.

A nice moment ruined somewhat when Deborah Glendinning rose to give her "umpteenth verse, same as the first" wrap up.

By the speed with which everyone packed up their bags and vacated the room, it was a checking-out moment.

This Friday a hearing will take place on the confidentiality that should be given to some exhibits. The plaintiffs will present their rebuttal arguments on December 8, 11, 12 and 15.

This post has been back-timed to provide consistency in editing

Day 249: "There's no evidence."

On their third day of closing arguments at the Montreal Tobacco Trials, the lawyers for Imperial Tobacco focused their remarks on the voluminous evidence that was gathered over the previous two years.

Perhaps the trial was too short. For Ms. Glendinning said not once but dozens of times today that "there was no evidence" to support even the most basic components of the plaintiffs' case.

Nothing to support the "quantum" of damages. No evidence of any "common fault".  Even the definition of the classes (the subject of at least two previous court rulings) was "legally insignificant", and "meaningless" because of lack of evidence.

She drew attention to information which had not been discussed at the trial -- like the smoking of contraband cigarettes or those made from roll-your-own tobacco. Without information on these, it was not possible to say for certain whether smokers who died from lung cancer had even smoked the defendants' cigarettes.  (Um, wasn't in the defence teams that asked for these subjects to be ruled irrelevant to the trial?!!)

Even government data could not be relied upon, as these were "the plaintiffs' Statistics Canada numbers. There were no experts."

Not a defective product, but a dangerous one.

Ironically to me, a key argument in ITL's defence is that its cigarettes are very dangerous. It might be a fault to sell a defective product, but there is no impediment to selling a dangerous one, it seems. "It can't be a fault to simply manufacture cigarettes, even though they have inherent dangers." 

The company took all "reasonable steps that were available at the relevant time to reduce the risks of its products."  And if the product was still dangerous 50 years later? Well, that's because of the "scientific complexity" of the problem and the "prime importance" of consumer acceptability.

It was clear that Ms. Glendinning sees the plaintiffs' suggestion that Justice Riordan find that selling cigarettes is "a fault" is a non-starter. Several times today she mockingly presented it as the logical and unreasonable outcome of actions the company was expected to take.

* "If nobody will smoke it, it is not going to help anybody. This leads us back to where we started ... don't sell cigarettes, don't put them on the market. That's the fault - because there's no benefit." 

*  "Is that what we are supposed to do? Put a product on the market and tell people not to use it?"

Nicotine a necessary but not sufficient driver of smoking

Ms. Glendinning refuted the idea that ITL took any special steps to control the nicotine levels in its cigarettes. 

She did not deny that cigarettes were a system to deliver nicotine. "Of course Imperial Tobacco knew that there was nicotine in its cigarettes that's what a cigarette is." But there was more to the smoking experience than the nicotine effect. "Mouthful. Inhalation. Throat scratch  -- a whole array of sensory properties."

She assured Justice Rirodan that ITL did not only select leaves from the higher nicotine part of the plant, that it never added nicotine, that it never used ammoniated treatment, and that it never did anything to manipulate pH levels. Moreover, the idea that there was a minimum level of nicotine required to keep smokers happy was only a "hypothesis," and one without any scientific evidence to support it.

Denial? We deny that too

To the claims that ITL denied that cigarettes caused lung cancer, Ms. Glendinning presented a reasonably lengthy explanation of how, in her view, the U.S. Surgeon General had departed from scientifically conventional understandings of causation (where the biological mechanism is establishesd) to a new concept of causation, established through epidemiology.

This argument (canard?) is familiar stuff to all of us alive in the 60s and 70s, and also to anyone present in this courtroom during the testimony of ITL scientists.  

But these employees should not be faulted for continuing to use the "traditional definition" of causation, Ms. Glendinning said. "Even the Surgeon General has not been consistent in what it has called the relationship."

In any event, none of this should matter to Justice Riordan's decision. 

"Even if you accept that we denied causation - so what? So did the Surgeon General. So did everybody. There is no evidence that any class member, let alone all class members, didn't understand the risks, didn't understand causation, didn't understand a distinction between causation and risk factor. .. 

You don't know whether the word 'risk' or 'caused' made a difference and that's the causal connection that has to be proved, You have no evidence on that at all."

No Secrets

Ms. Glendinning said that there was no evidence that Imperial Tobacco had knowledge that was different than that held by government, or that it had withheld information. 

She showed a half dozen or more slides of scientific publications which she attributed to ITL science (they went too fast for me to record them, but the Exhibit numbers I saw are those associated with the testimony of James Hogg and Minoo Bilimoria).

"Where is the secret science? It is a figment of the imagination of the plaintiffs."

Style and Substance

I suspect I am not the only in the court-room whose interest in the ideas presented by Ms. Glendinning was negatively coloured by the stridency of its presentation this morning (and over many months). Justice Riordan looked as though he had heard enough. His arms were crossed - his head tilted and gaze averted. 

If the purpose of oral arguments is to re-engage the judge in your perspective, then Craig Lockwood's approach (this afternoon and over many months) seems more effective.

His more relaxed posture and respectful but conversational tone are a better match to Justice Riordan's own style. His willingness to acknowledge vulnerabilities in his case made the spin less tiresome. As always, by his body language and questions, Justice Riordan showed he was more interested in Mr. Lockwood's presentation. 

What people were aware of and and when they were aware of it

When he began his discussion of evidentiary issues after the lunch break, Mr. Lockwood's first task was to buttress the conclusions of some of the defence awareness experts that the public was "unequivocally" aware of the risks of smoking by the early 1960s.  

He cited the testimony of David Flaherty, Jacques Lacoursière, Raymond Duch -- but made no mention of Claire Durand, the expert who testified for ITL about polling.

These experts had based their opinions on news stories and on public opinion polls. They had not considered advertising or reviewed internal industry documents, as the plaintiffs' polling expert, Christian Bourque, had done. 

The company polling, as he described it, was "limited marketing studies used for a different purpose." They were not intended to measure knowledge at any point in time, but to look instead at trends. 

To illustrate how these polls asked the wrong type of question to establish awareness, he pointed to the question put to smokers about which statement "best describes their feelings". He told the judge that "Feelings have no place in this analysis." 

Mr. Lockwood said that the plaintiffs' were wrong to "cherry pick market evidence to counter expert historical evidence." Using market research as "a collateral attack on awareness evidence" improperly "defies the rules of evidence." 

Awareness vs. belief

Mr. Lockwood said manufacturers had no responsibility to achieve any level of belief among consumers. To require them to do so would set a "new legal standard for awareness."

In the decision tree that had been presented to the court by Stephen Young, Mr. Lockwood said manufacturer were responsible only for a few early steps in the path (marked in yellow). 

The rest, he said, was not their table. 

"That is something that Public Health strive to do and struggle with, frankly, but it is not something that the manufacturer is supposed to do." Anything more would be "too subjective to be a basis for law."

The role of government

And if public health authorities did not step up, this too was not the job of the companies or this court to criticize. 

He cited several examples of government official rejecting the need for cigarette warnings. "If there is equitable knowledge, and the government makes decisions, how can we revisit those decisions?"

No trivialization

Mr. Lockwood said that in the plaintiffs' brief he had counted about 17 public statements about smoking and health by ITL officials. Not much, he suggested, in a history of 50 years. 

Many of these statements could not have affected consumers, as they were in formats (company newsletters, internal correspondence, speeches to the retail trade) that were not widely circulated. "At some point you have to draw the line -- which of those statements could rise to the fact that it influence the public?"

"At the end of the day - people aren't reading the [company newsletter, the] Leaflet. It can't be construed as the equivalent of the Globe and Mail."

(If there is an award for the most disingenuous argument in court, then I would like to nominate this one. What smokers did read in the Globe and Mail is being cloaked in Parliamentary privilege.)

Damage control

Mr. Lockwood addressed some of the most eye-popping records on the trial -- the Viking research studies and the thoughts of Bob Bexon, who directed the research.

"The Court has to distinguish what was being considered and what was done. What matters is what got to the public. The fact that Bob Bexon theorized about releasing leaflets about the benefits of smoking has no relevance to the case." ... "The plaintiffs are basically asking this court to impose liability on the basis of bad thoughts."

 Mr. Lockwood admitted that these records looked bad, and tried to put them in the context of a man who did not at the time have a clear role in the company.

Exhibit 1505.7, A post-viking ad

"They are all within a six month to one year window. He and Wayne Knox were basically trying to find a home in the marketing department." But in the end, "they didn't go out and promote the benefits of smoking."

Well, not directly, maybe!

The closing arguments for Imperial Tobacco will conclude on Monday.

This post has been back-dated to provide consistency in indexing. 

Day 248: A "no" from every direction

Oh, la la! My head hurts.

It has been an exhausting experience listening to Suzanne Côté's rapid-fire explanations of the many and varied legal obstacles to the plaintiff's case against Imperial Tobacco succeeding. So many principles! So much jurisprudence! So many slides with small print! So many sentences squeezed together!

For a day and a half, Ms. Côté has taken Justice Riordan through a forest of legal theories and case issues to support her client's case. Prescription. Contractual liability. Manufacturers' duties. Causation. Fin de non recevoir. Adverse inference. Punitive damages. Novus actus interveniens. Provisional execution. Collective Recovery.

By mid-day, even those lawyers who had no more to do than watch were showing signs of exhaustion. (In front of the bar were the usual large teams involved in this case, but in the public seats were many involved in other Canadian tobacco suits). All the more reason to admire the stamina of Justice Riordan and Ms Côté, who completed this marathon session without seeming to break a sweat (or a yawn).

No. No. and No. 

Regretfully, my grasp and retention of the details of Ms. Côté's dense presentation are limited. But even I could follow the central link to each of the issues she raised: the plaintiffs did not have a legal leg to stand on, and the judge would be in error if he ruled in their favour.

On prescription (time limitation): The entirety of the Létourneau case for addiction is barred, as more than three years passed between the time the companies put the addiction warning on their products (September 1994) and the filing of the lawsuit in 1998.

The addiction suit was filed too late!

On the Quebec Tobacco-Damages and Health-Care Costs Recovery Act (which lifts the time constraints for lawsuits underway in 2009: This Blais-Létourneau cases cannot benefit from this exemption, as they were not specifically identified in the law. This "exhorbitant" law must be interpreted restrictively, and in any event should not be applied until the industry's challenges to it have been exhausted.

On whether the companies have liability: No, cigarettes were no more dangerous than smokers could reasonably expect. No, smokers assumed the risks of using these products. No, smokers had the responsibility to act prudently, such as informing themselves of the risks of tobacco use. No, even if the company had done something wrong to initiate smoking, the fact that smokers continued to smoke means that they assumed the risks.

On whether any smokers' disease can be linked to tobacco use: No, general causation can be established, but specific causation cannot. To establish specific causation, the plaintiffs would have to show that smoking caused disease in each and every class member, to prove  that the defendants were at fault and to prove that this fault was causally connected to smoking.

On whether it is wrong to sell something as dangerous as cigarettes: No, selling a dangerous product is not a fault in and of itself. The idea of balancing the risks of a product against its benefits is not part of Quebec law.

On whether the judge can make any presumptions about faults, or causation or damages: No, the law requires that any such presumptions be "serious, precise and concordant" - and this has not been established in this case.

On whether the absence of health warnings can be considered a fault of the manufacturers: No, this happened before the Consumer Protection Act was adopted (in 1980). No, the conduct of the manufacturers must be considered in light of the standards of the time, and the absence of warning labels was consistent with the absence of labelling on any products.

On whether a class action should succeed if members of the class have not testified. No, and Mr. Blais (who did not die until mid-2012) and Ms. Létourneau attended some sessions of the trial, demonstrating that they were available to testify.

On whether the heirs of smokers who would have been members of the class should be entitled to any award for compensation: No, Quebec law does not allow for heirs to have the benefit of any judgment.

On whether collective recovery (one big payment) can be assessed against the companies: No, the evidence will not allow for a sufficiently accurate calculation of the total claim -- therefore individual proceedings should be required for each of the 1 million claimants.

The above barely scratches the surface of a day's arguments covering not layers of details and many layers of potential scenarios. The back-up positions in this business seem to be given as much emphasis as the core arguments.

As was the case yesterday, it was Justice Riordan's questions which captured attention. The exchange he had with Ms Côté shortly before the lunch break will have triggered some noon-time discussions.

After umpteen comments about the inability to find a one-size solution for 1 million smokers, the judge pointed to an alternative option available to him.

"What if I decide that individual recovery is impossible and too expensive for compensatory damages?... What if I find fault, I find damages, and I find sufficient causality, and I decide that ...only punitive damages apply? 

He cited Article 1034 of the Quebec Civil Code (pasted below) which (I think) allows for an award to be assigned to an entity, such as a charity.

Quebec Civil Code

Article 1034. The court may, if of opinion that the liquidation of individual claims or the distribution of an amount to each of the members is impossible or too expensive, refuse to proceed with it and provide for the distribution of the balance of the amounts recovered collectively after collocating the law costs and the fees of the representative's attorney.

Ms. Côté responded by saying that he would be in error to do so. (He smiled). She later elaboratesd that in such a scenario - with individual claims waived -- then the class action would no longer be valid, and the suits would have to be dismissed. 

Tomorrow and Monday, ITL will present its views on the evidence gathered during the trial, and respond to the factual claims made against it. 

The trial schedule has again been altered. Next Friday (November 21), some lingering issues around confidentiality will be discussed, as will the parties' varying views on prescription/ time limits. The plaintiffs rebuttal and any potential re-rebuttal by the companies have now been rescheduled to mid-December (8th, 11th, 12 and 15th).

Day 247: Jamais deux sans trois? Third on a match?

The closing arguments began this morning for the last of the three defendant tobacco companies in the Blais-Létourneau Montreal class actions.

On behalf of Imperial Tobacco, Deborah Glendinning spent the morning highlighting the key reasons she felt the $21 billion claims should be dismissed.

Unlike the previous defence arguments, which were handled by only one lawyer, ITL's position will be provided by the three Osler lawyers who have been at the helm: Ms. Glendinning (introduction and some evidentiary issues), Ms. Suzanne Côté (legal issues) and Mr. Craig Lockwood (evidentiary issues).

Save the biggest for last

Justice Riordan, who will soon have the daunting task of ruling on this 32-month trial, has often quipped "jamais deux sans trois"  as the three defence teams stood in solidarity on a point of argument.

There were no such quips today. But with the same legal precedents and arguments being repeated for a third airing, perhaps there were hopes on the right hand side of the court that, indeed, the third time's a charm. 

Imperial Tobacco is unquestionably the main defendant in this trial. With the largest market share and consequently facing the largest share of any damages, it has the most to lose. With the greatest amount of evidence against it, it also has the most to be lost on. No wonder that its legal team has dominated the defence proceedings.

The importance of ITL's defence in this and other pending law suits may explain why the public seats were mostly filled. As might be expected, the cheering squad from ITL's head office was there - but so too were lawyers from governments who are leading other Canadian suits.

Style and substance

Deborah Glendinning
Youtube video on class actions

It has been several weeks since I skimmed through the written arguments submitted by Imperial Tobacco's defence team (403 pages and 15 appendices!).

When I walked into the court this morning, all that remained clear in my mind was the aggrieved tone that ran through it. It was an uncomfortable reminder of how easy I find it to confuse style for substance.

I cautioned myself against this temptation as the determinedly stylish Ms. Glendinning positioned herself in front of a plexiglass lecturn, opened a binder thick with well-thumbed speaking notes (highlighted in pink!) and began her remarks.

"The ordinary rules must apply."

She began with the central argument made at length by the other defendants: that the plaintiffs were under an obligation to establish fault-causation-damages at an individual level and that they had failed to do so. She supported her claim that "the ordinary rules of evidence are not changed in any way because this is a class action" with increasingly familiar citations from a number of Supreme Court rulings.

She said the plaintiffs had admitted that they had not met their burden of proof. "They have mounted a commission of inquiry into the industry's conduct, but have failed to establish a common fault, or causation for 1.1 million people, or damages any one person, let alone the entire class."  

It was this failure that had led the trial into uncharted legal waters. "It is remarkable that after 137 days of proof - and thousands of documents - they now admit they cannot prove causation... and because they have admitted that, they are asking this Court to make ground-breaking new law ... to create presumptions out of thin air."

The plaintiffs deserved no sympathy. It was through their "expansive and limitless" claim that they had become "the authors of their own misfortune."

Among the fatal elements of their case was the decision of the plaintiffs to not call any class members to testify. "In the history of class proceedings in this province, a court has never ever granted collective recovery with zero evidence from any representative."  (A few months ago, it was her team that was proposing 60 days of testimony from class witnesses.)

"We don't dispute that"

For the first time that I can recall, Imperial Tobacco admitted to some of the concerns that have been the focus of this trial.

In answer to 5 of the key questions, Ms. Glendinning said there were no disputes from Imperial Tobacco:  "We made cigarettes." "They have dangers. "People can get sick from smoking." "Smoking can be hard to quit." "We occasionally challenged that smoking causes disease."  

No one laughed, at least not out-loud, when she claimed these questions "could have been resolved in two and a half weeks." 

"The duty of the consumer to become informed."

What she did not admit was that ITL had failed in any duty it might have had to warn users about the dangers of its products.

To the contrary. "The manufacture owes a duty to warn about the harms that are not evident to the normal and prudent and diligent users," but was "not under a duty to warn of facts that are of general knowledge."  Nor did manufacturers obligation ever extend beyond warnings to advice.

She cited (at length) rulings against small-claims court cases involving Cecilia Létourneau and the late Joe Battaglia's, in which the judges had ruled that the her company could not be held responsible for these smokers' conditions.

(Later in the day, when elaborating on this argument, Suzanne Côté went further, saying that those who should be held responsible under law were not manufacturers, but consumers. "Civil law requires all people to act prudently -- including those who buy products.")

A dangerous product, yes. A useless one, no.

The plaintiffs have said that cigarettes are sufficiently dangerous and without sufficient usefulness that those who sell them should be considered at fault. Ms. Glendinning spoke derisively of this "late -breaking reorientation of their case."

Such risk-benefit analysis was not part of Quebec law, she said. Even if it were, there would be no justification in such a ruling. "That question is not in the purview of the court. It is in the purview of the legislature ... it is a legal product." 

She found "lots of evidence" that cigarettes had utility. Their addiction expert, John Davies, had cited mental and social benefits to smoking, including that they helped one "look cool." In 1964, the Surgeon General's report had described smoking as a "psychogenic search for contentment." 
Even a plaintiffs' expert toxicologist said that nicotine could benefit those with conditions like dementia and Parkinson's disease.

"Use and abuse of evidence"

On questions of law, I expect to be baffled. But when the company lawyers turn to the testimony and evidence presented during the trial, I am not so much confused as amazed by how different their understanding of facts is from my own.

With some verbal drum-rolling, Ms. Glendinning cautioned Justice Riordan to be suspicious of the claims that the plaintiffs were making. "Be wary of the statements they make and to look behind them to see that the proof they cite is valid proof."

She said there the plaintiffs' brief was "full of examples" -- so many that "they didn't have time to deal with them [all]".  

Yet her small handful of examples did not, to these eyes, contain any obvious clangers, let alone any claims that were not substantiated by the standards one might expect in a history book or a journal article.

Her concerns seemed more with the use of a document to contradict statements made by defence witnesses, or the use of documents that had not been subject to witness testimony, or the appearance of references to "2M" documents (those not admitted for the proof of their contents).

One example she provided of the misuse of a documentary record was the much-cited comment of Imperial Tobacco's former president, Bob Bexon, now deceased: "if our product was not addictive we would not sell a single cigarette next week." (Exhibit 266). The truth of his views, she said, lay in another document where he said that smoking could not be considered addictive, given that so many people had quit.

"Not destroyed."

The conflict between testimony and documents surfaced again when Ms. Glendinning said there had been nothing untoward about BAT's decision to remove scientific reports from Canada.

These papers had not been "destroyed", she said, offering as evidence of this the fact that they had been made available to litigants like the plaintiffs in this case.

She rejected Justice Riordan's suggestion that these documents were available as the result of subsequent court actions in the United States and stressed "there is no suggestion that they were taken away for reasons of litigation."

Letter from lawyer JK Wells about
ensuring scientific documents don't find
their way into lawsuits
Exhibit 1467.2

Justice Riordan pressed again. But wasn't there a letter to that effect?

Once more, she said that testimony from ITL's witnesses should settle the matter. "I don't know what letter there is. But there is the testimony of Mr. Barnes, who swore under oath."

Moreover, she said, the document destruction/retention issue had been discussed twice before in litigation.

One instance she cited was news to me: the documents had been produced in association with the C-71 trial: "Mr. Potter produced those documents for the [Attorney General]. They are available in my office. They never came and looked at them"). The second was the failed Spasic trial.

(Ms. Glendinning did not mention that Justice Gladys Kessler had also cited Simon Potter's activities when reviewing BAT's document destruction policy as part of her finding that the U.S. companies were guilty of racketeering.)

"Relentless trashing of industry witnesses"

The historian Robert Proctor can be forgiven if his ears were burning today. 

Launching into her response to what she characterized as "relentless trashing" of industry witnesses, Ms. Glendinning showed she was not shy to try her own hand at the trashing game. She took some swings at this Stanford University historian who testified here two years ago.

She reminded Justice Riordan of Mr. Proctor's unapologetic dislike for the tobacco industry. She flashed on the screen the amount he has earned as a result of testifying against tobacco companies. 

She brought in new material against Mr. Proctor, e-mailing to the judge a ruling from a Florida court which she said was harshly critical of Mr. Proctor's ethics. (I do not have the ruling, but the story has been told elsewhere).

Justice Riordan, who has shown little appetite for mud-slinging, asked pointedly whether the Florida Court had rejected Mr. Proctor's expertise. Ms. Glendinning admitted that this had not been the case, but that conditions had been imposed on his testimony. 

In contrast to Mr. Proctor, Ms. Glendinning spoke of the high standing of those who had testified at this trial for the defendants (i.e. James Heckman, James Hogg) or who had previously worked for the companies (i.e. Hans Selye, Peter Macklem). She pointed to their many honours and achievements. Nobel laureates, Nobel nominees, Hall of Honour inductees. 

Perhaps she should have stopped there. 

The next slate of witnesses whose reputations she wanted to burnish were former health minister Marc Lalonde and former associate deputy minister of health, Bert Liston. These men, she said, had "no axe to grind" and were "not in the pay of the industry". 

Yet the trial record shows that Mr. Liston was a consultant to the CTMC shortly after his post-blood scandal retirement from Health Canada (Exhibits 884-pp, 1335) and the public record shows that Mr. Lalonde was a registered lobbyist for Alfred Dunhill in opposition to the 1997 Tobacco Act. 

Epidemiology and causation

There are some times when a question has more information than the answer.

That was the case at the outset of Ms. Glendinning's remarks when Justice Riordan asked her to explain how she felt the provisions of Quebec's Tobacco-related Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, (s. 15) which allow for statistical proof affected her position that individual causation must be established.

She did not really address the question, and so at the end of the morning, the judge asked again. 

"If the Cost Recovery Act allows as a sole proof statistical studies, and if epidemiological studies are by definition based solely on a study of a population, then do I not have to consider that provision of the law as an exceptional opening of population analysis in the context of causation within a class action?"

Sadly, I failed to record her answer before she announced that she had finished her "closing opening" and the court adjourned for lunch.

ITL's elaboration of its positions on various legal issues (prescription, contractual liability, etc) were presented by Ms. Suzanne Côté this afternoon and will be continued - and reported - tomorrow.

This post has been back dated to provide for consistency in indexing

Day 246: General findings of fault, maybe. Specific injuries unproven.

Today Mr. Guy Pratte completed his four-day presentation of the final arguments for his client, JTI-Macdonald. It was a fast-paced exercise.

His focus was on the methods that had been used to count the number of smokers whose disease could be attributed to tobacco use, and proposals to identify smokers who are addicted. And, in case all of his arguments over the week had not hit home and Justice Riordan did not dismiss the claims against his company, he also challenged the plaintiffs' proposals for the amount that should be paid, and how it should be disbursed.

"You can't reduce all individuals to one single number"

From a public health perspective, the approach taken by the plaintiffs to assess the number of smokers whose lung cancer and other diseases are related to smoking is fairly straightforward. They asked epidemiologist Jack Siemiatcyki to calculate the number of cigarettes that would have to be smoked before it was more likely than not that tobacco was the cause of any individual's disease. The cut-off point he calculated of 36,500 cigarettes, or 5 pack years, was subsequently built into the revised class definition.

From the way Mr. Pratte presented it, this approach is not standard from a legal point of view -- although he acknowledges that the Quebec government passed a law which specifically allowed for statistical methods to be applied in this case and its own suit. (The companies are trying to defeat this law through a constitutional challenge. So far, they haven't been successful.)

Mr. Pratte has hammered home the many legal reasons he thinks this approach is flawed -- chief among which seems to be that it lets the plaintiffs sidestep the job of showing the connection between any individual's disease and any actions of the company.  "It's true that statistics and epidemiology have been used in courts before - but never has it been deployed in courts to establish specific causation."

He repeated his concern that people, like himself, who had quit smoking more than 30 years earlier had a much lower risk profile, but would still be considered eligible for damages if they came down with lung cancer.

He reiterated the long list of criticisms that were levelled by himself (in cross-examination) and by the defendant companies' statistical experts, Mssrs. Mundt and Marais. (He made no reference to the other defence statistician, Mr. Price.)  

The result, he said, was that Mr. Siemiatycki's results were not reliable enough to hang a decision on. "If one proposes a method which fails the measures that statistics has evolved to ensure reliability, it can't be used by this court - regardless of what section 15 says." 

He took care to distinguish between his criticism of Mr. Siemiatycki's conclusions and his respect for Mr. Siemiatycki,

No way around individual trials

He explained to Justice Riordan why these problems could not be fixed by setting a higher critical amount, or by averaging an award across a population.

"You can't just move the dial." Increasing the threshold of years smoked would mean that some people would improperly be left out of the class. (Justice Riordan smiled as he asked him whether this was something he needed to worry about, and used it as an occasion to remind Mr. Pratte that the companies had refused to provide their own estimation of how much Quebec disease resulted from smoking.)

Mr. Pratte said that although lung cancer might be responsible for 80% of disease, the Supreme Court would consider it wrong to give each lung cancer victim 80% of a damage award. By the number of times he referred to it, a ruling about the slander of immigrant taxi-drivers by a right-wing radio host (Bou Malhab) is a key plank in Mr. Pratte's defence.

Anyone can quit. 

The plaintiffs proposal for nicotine addiction to be defined by daily smoking over a period of time was also accepted by Justice Riordan as a way to define eligibility for the Létourneau addiction class.

The class definition arrived at does not require a medical diagnosis of addiction, but it does require that someone be a smoker on at least three occasions separated by a decade. (Have smoked before 1994, be a daily smoker on September 1998 and be a smoker on February 2005). The plaintiffs calculate that about 900,000 of Quebec's 1.6 million smokers would be qualify (i.e. 52%).

Mr. Pratte rejected this or any other self-assessment tool as a way of measuring addiction. "It cannot be that addiction or dependence is ascertained simply by self-reports of 'I can't quit or by a mechanical 3 or 4 year rule," he objected.

Instead, he proposes that the measure of addiction be established through individual assessments under the DSM tools for tobacco use disorder. It was this approach, he said, that was used in clinical settings by the psychiatrists who had testified (both Dr. Negrete and Dr. Bourget).

It was not true, he said, that anyone who was addicted to cigarettes was not able to quit. He cited Health Canada's advice to smokers that "with the right combination of practice, determination and support, you will be able to stop smoking for good" as support for his view that it came down to a question of willpower. "There is a huge voluntary element in that."

The Quantum? Not much.

During the short afternoon session, Mr. Pratte turned to the issues of how much money might be assessed against the companies should Justice Riordan arrive at this point in a judgement.

While the plaintiffs have calculated the compensation on a per-capita basis, they are asking for it to be levied against the companies as a lump sum -- a collective recovery of damages assessed on an aggregate basis.

Given his insistence that the impact of his company would vary among different individuals, it was not surprising that Mr. Pratte opposes collective recovery. "The damages sought against JTIM are wildly exaggerated for a host of reasons, principally that there is no way for you to arrive at a number of total class members in either class about which you can be sufficiently certain that it is accurate."

The Conclusion: "It just won't write"

Mr. Pratte's prefaced his closing comments by referring to the Chief Justice of Canada's Supreme Court, who said that sometimes decisions got changed during the process of writing a ruling. The judges were "leaning a particular way and when they sit down to write the reasons, they found that it 'it just won't write.'"

He said that even if the judge wanted to find the companies guilty, he would not find a lawful way to do so.  "I don't know which way you are leaning, but based on the law you cannot get to the result [the plaintiffs] are urging on you." 

He identified the roadblocks to such a decision: the absence of a risk/utility doctrine in Quebec, the failure "to connect any fault to a harm on a class member", the historical context in which actions would have to be judged.

He recommended that Justice Riordan follow the path of the Florida Appeal court when it broke-apart the Engle class action into individual trials. "You could make general findings" about the dangerous or addictive nature of cigarettes, or about specific faults at specific times. These "could be used in individual trials by those who could prove injury."

This, he said was "the farthest you could go by respecting the law and the facts here."

Exhausting? Yes. Convincing? ....

As Mr. Pratte finished, Justice Riordan acknowledged the physical and mental energy that would have been required to stand for four days and summarize 1,000 pages of argument. "You must be exhausted."  

If so, Mr. Pratte did not show it. His stamina is to be envied - I was only an onlooker, and my brain was fried.

The finishing line just got closer

I have been wondering this week how Imperial Tobacco could fill the 8 days it had scheduled without risking irritating repetitions of what has been said by the other two companies.

Ms. Suzanne Côté rose at the end of the day to say that the company would need only half the time originally scheduled. The details of the abridged schedule are to be worked out.

The trial will resume on November 12th, when the final arguments for Imperial Tobacco will be presented. 

This post has been back-dated to provide continuity in indexing