The Supreme Court Takes On Another Tobacco Ruling

This Thursday morning, as on many Thursday mornings, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a news release indicating some of the requests for appeal on which it had made a decision. Among those was a decision to allow the government of British Columbia to appeal a pre-trial ruling in its decades-long lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

The ruling that is now under appeal, as mentioned here in February, regards the defendant's companies right to compel data from the province. Part of the context for this court is the differing decisions taken by the courts in different jurisdictions which are managing these simultaneous if slow-moving lawsuits.

Summer reading is available! The arguments put forward by the government of British Columbia and by Philip Morris are available. 

There was another interesting if minor footnote to this case this week. On Tuesday, a new government for British Columbia took office. The new Minister of Health is Adrian Dix, who was a key back-room player in the decision of the B.C. government to initiate litigation against the industry. That decision was announced more than 20 years and 4 premiers ago.

This a long game, with a lot of line changes!