From: Rob Cunningham [rcunning@ottawa.cancer.ca]
Sent: July 27, 2009 10:30 AM
To: Rob Cunningham
Subject: proposed class action filed in Manitoba against tobacco industry
See news item below. The case
discussed below is a proposed class action against the tobacco industry on
behalf of individual smokers. This is a different type of case than a
medicare cost recovery lawsuit filed by a provincial government.
There are currently two certified
class actions proceeding in Quebec. In B.C., the Knight class action
Imperial Tobacco based on "light" and "mild" cigarettes has
been certified to proceed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/winnipeg/2009/06/16/9810741-sun.html
Misled public, claims lawsuit
Last Updated: 16th June 2009, 4:06am
A Winnipeg woman is hoping to succeed where all other smokers
have failed in the fight against Big Tobacco.
Deborah
Kunka has filed a class-action suit alleging the industry has intentionally
misled the public about the health effects of smoking and targets children to
maintain their profits.
Kunka,
says the lawsuit, began smoking in 1976 when she was 12 years old "after
seeing various tobacco advertisements which portrayed smoking as 'glamorous'
and 'prestigious' and which failed to adequately warn, or warn at all, about
the harmful effects of smoking."
Kunka,
says the lawsuit, continues to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day despite
suffering chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, severe asthma and reversible
lung disease.
"Though
she repeatedly tried, her addiction to nicotine precludes her from
quitting," says the lawsuit.
The
lawsuit, which has yet to be certified, names as defendants 15 Canadian and
international tobacco manufacturers and the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturer's
Council.
The
lawsuit has been filed on behalf of "all individuals, including their
estates" who purchased cigarettes manufactured by the defendants.
The
defendants, says the lawsuit, "targeted children in their advertising,
promotional and marketing activities in Manitoba with the object of inducing
them to start or continue smoking" and undermined legislative and
regulatory efforts to prevent children from smoking.
'NOT
AN EASY CASE'
While
some state governments have succeeded in forcing tobacco companies to reimburse
them for health- care costs associated with smoking, "no smoker claim to
my knowledge has ever been paid," said Kunka's lawyer Tony Merchant in a
phone interview from his Regina office.
"It's
not an easy case ... Big Tobacco has been very successful in avoiding liability
over circumstances that everybody in the nation knows -- that nicotine and
cigarette smoking causes a raft of problems for people and the companies over
time have succeeded in not letting people in the marketplace really understand
that."
So
what makes Merchant think this lawsuit will be different?
"What's
going on is wrong," he said. "My belief is the courts will see this
mounting array of evidence of wrongdoing by companies, evidence that they were
deliberately keeping information from the marketplace, setting forward with
plans to deceive. It's a societal claim that ought to succeed."
Parties
interested in adding their names to the lawsuit can contact Merchant at www.merchantlaw.com.