|
May 1994 |
Merrill Williams, a paralegal working for
solicitors for Brown & Williams Tobacco
company leaks 4,000 pages of BAT documents
to government lawyers and to a university
professor.
|
|
August 1994 |
Minnesota sues
tobacco companies. This is the second of
what would become lawsuits by all U.S. state
attorneys general. |
|
June 1995 |
University of
Southern California at San Francisco places
the Brown & Williamson documents leaked by
Merrill Williams on its web-site.
Minnesota
trial judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick issues
orders to establish document depository in
Minneapolist that will eventually hold more
than 26 million pages of internal papers
from tobacco companies. A similar depository
is established in Guildford, England, for
BAT’s documents.
|
|
June 1997 |
B.C. Minister of
Health Joy MacPhail introduces legislation
to enable law-suit against tobacco industry.
B.C. is the first province to express
interest in suing tobacco companies. (June
16)
Other state
attorneys general reach proposed U.S. $368
billion settlement with the industry, but
Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey
III opposes it as a sweetheart deal for the
industry; the deal later collapses in
Congress. (June 20)
|
|
September 1997 |
Minnesota trial
official (the ‘special master’) finds that
the cigarette makers used the protection of
lawyer-client confidentiality to shield
wrongdoing and recommends release of 834
secret documents. |
|
November 1997 |
B.C. Minister of
Health Joy MacPhail announces B.C.’s
three-pronged strategy on tobacco before an
audience of tobacco specialists from across
Canada at a luncheon hosted by Physicians
for a Smoke-Free Canada. Her speech and
accompanying press release define the
strategy:
"To expose
the truth about the dangers of tobacco and
the behavior of the industry in marketing
this addictive product at children;
To pursue
justice by holding the tobacco industry
accountable for the damage it has done
hiding the true dangers of tobacco and
targeting children as tobacco consumers; and
To improve
public health through real change in tobacco
products and the behavior of the industry."
(Nov 24, 1997)
|
|
December 1997 |
Chair of the
U.S. Congress Committee on Commerce, Tom
Bliley, subpoenas documents from the
companies involved in the Minnesota case.
(December 4)
Minnesota
trial Judge Fitzpatrick fines Brown &
Williamson $100,000 for failure to turn
documents. (December 31)
|
|
January 1998 |
B.C. Ministry of
Health appoints law firm Bull, Housser and
Tupper and Thomas Berger as its legal agents
in its litigation against Canadian tobacco
companies. (January 6)
U.S.
Congressman Henry Waxman releases a handful
of RJR documents showing that this company
targeted its marketing towards under-age
smokers (January 14)
Minnesota
becomes first state to reject a pre-trial
settlement, and to take its lawsuit to a
jury. State opens its case with focus on
industry documents. (January 26)
|
|
February 1998 |
Hundreds of
internal documents from the Brown &
Williamson Tobacco Co. are released by Rep.
John Conyers, D-Mich., during a House
Judiciary Committee hearing on legal
protection for the tobacco industry.
(February 5)
Joy MacPhail
becomes Minister of Finance. Penny Priddy
becomes Minister of Health. (February 18)
Tobacco
companies begin to make documents available
on a variety of web-sites, and open the
Minnesota depository to the public.
U.S.-based company documents begin to become
accessible through the internet. The
Guildford depository is not open, nor are
its documents posted on the web. (February
20)
|
|
March 1998 |
Minnesota trial
judge ordered the disclosure of 39,000
confidential tobacco-industry documents,
ruling that attorney-client privilege was
used to shield research about children as
young as 5. In revoking the shield of
attorney confidentiality, Fitzpatrick said
cigarette makers and their trade groups
``committed numerous abuses of privilege and
certain violations of court orders and the
rules of court.'' (March 7) |
|
April 1998 |
After a series
of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds
Fitzpatrick’s ruling that attorney-client
privilege was not properly applied to
tobacco industry documents
U.S.
Settlement talks, stalled for months, are
declared dead by tobacco companies. RJ
Reynolds, Philip Morris, U.S. Tobacco and
Brown & Williamson walk away. (April 8)
Congressional
committee on Commerce posts 39,000 documents
(not indexed) on its web-site. (April 22,
1998)
|
|
May 1998 |
On the day of
closing arguments for its lawyers, Minnesota
settles with the tobacco companies. A
condition of the settlement is a commitment
to keeping documents available for a 10 year
period in depositories in Minnesota (for
U.S.-based companies) and England (for BAT
documents). (May 8) |
|
November 1998 |
B.C. files suit
against Canadian Tobacco companies (November
12)
B.C. Strategy
document is redrafted. The goal of
"exposing…." Is changed to "change the
behaviour of the tobacco industry with
regard to the marketing of tobacco
products."
Attorneys
general of 46 states and 5 territories sign
agreement with tobacco companies to settle
lawsuits. (November 23)
|
|
March 1999 |
Physicians for a
Smoke-Free Canada (PSC) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) send the first research
team to BAT’s depository of documents in
Guildford. Approximately 500 of the 45,000
files are reviewed – and 6,000 pages
relevant to Canada are copied. |
|
April 1999 |
Physicians for a
Smoke-Free Canada opens a new web-site to
make available all the documents it received
from the Guildford depository (www.tobaccopapers.org)
(April 28, 1999)
A team of
B.C. government lawyers and public servants
visit Guildford for two weeks.
|
|
May 1999 |
A team of Health
Canada lawyers and public servants visit
Guildford for one week. They review 1,200
files and order 10,000 pages copied.
|
|
June 1999 |
British Columbia
officials travel to Washington D.C. to
inform document researchers (from
government, universities and
non-governmental organizations) that all the
documents received from British Columbia
will be made public. |
|
October 1999 |
British Columbia
and Health Canada make plans to jointly
release all documentation in Ottawa. Two
days before the scheduled release,
organizers are informed that the B.C.
Minister of Health is ill and the event must
be indefinitely postponed. Questions to B.C.
officials about a re-scheduled date for
document release are not answered.
B.C. lawyers
return to Guildford for a second two-week
visit.
|
|
November 1999 |
Physicians for a
Smoke-Free Canada applies under Access to
Information Act (ATI) and Freedom of
Information Act (FOI) for documentation from
Health Canada and the B.C. Ministry of
Health. (November 1)
Health Canada
releases most of its documents (not indexed)
on a web-site (http://www.cctc.ca/ncth/guildford).
(November 22)
B.C. Ministry
of Health informs PSC that it will not
respect the usual 30-day reply on FOI
requests in order to consult with other
deparatments (November 30). Reply now due
December 31st.
Health Canada
lawyers and officials return to Guildford
depository for a one-week visit.
|
|
December 1999 |
B.C. Ministry of
Health informs PSC that it has been granted
an additional 30 delay on replying by the
B.C. Commissioner for Freedom of Information
(December 30). Reply now due January 30,
2000.
Government of
Canada launches suit against RJR-Nabisco for
loss of excise tax revenues resulting from
smuggling.
|
|
January 2000 |
PSC writes the
office of Premier Dan Millar office to
request investigation of pending refusal to
release documents |
|
February 2000 |
PSC is informed
that the B.C. Ministry of Health refuses to
release Guildford documentation, claiming
they are "solicitor-client" privileged.
|
