Major Study of Tobacco Industry Trial
Transcripts and Depositions Reveals Tactics to Avoid Responsibility

 

Research funded by the National Cancer Institute and the American Legacy Foundation has produced two important resources for public health researchers, attorneys, and journalists: 1) an online database of hundreds of thousands of pages of tobacco trial and deposition transcripts; and 2) a Special Supplement to the Journal, Tobacco Control, consisting of 14 articles authored by leading tobacco control researchers, policy analysts and attorneys.  The articles rely on this database of statements made under oath to better understand how the tobacco industry attempts to avoid legal responsibility for the vast harm that its products inflict. The Tobacco Control Resource Center and Tobacco Products Liability Project’s publications and staff are referenced 12 times in the Special Supplement,  

The research team was led by Dr. Ronald M. Davis, a longtime leader in tobacco control and President-Elect of the American Medical Association; Clifford E. Douglas, an attorney who has played a prominent role in efforts to bring cigarette manufacturers to justice; and John K. Beasley of the Michigan Public Health Institute’s Center for Tobacco Use Prevention and Research.  

One article, “Epidemiology of the third wave of tobacco litigation in the United States, 1994–2005,” examines the litigation trend over the past dozen years or so and finds an impressive 41% success rate against cigarette companies and their allied interests in the trial courts.  

Another article, “Tobacco manufacturers’ defence against plaintiffs’ claims of cancer causation: throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick,” looks closely at the ways in which cigarette companies deny any blame in legal proceedings, even as they now readily admit that smoking causes lung cancer.    

“Historians’ testimony on ‘common knowledge’ of the risks of tobacco use: a review and analysis of experts testifying on behalf of cigarette manufacturers in civil litigation,” shows how the industry-affiliated historians presented a skewed history of the cigarette at trial.  

The multiyear study producing these resources represents the first systematic study by teams of researchers of testimony across a whole field of public health litigation.   

See the Special Supplement’s Table of Contents and Abstracts

Search the Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive online through the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library [and check the box marked DATTA]