Standing with those who seek
justice
Ruth E Malone

Each time I read a news report about a
lawsuit filed against tobacco companies,
or a jury award in such a case, I salute the
courage and tenacity of those individuals
and families who continue to carry the
tobacco battle forward in the courtroom.
Of course, the lawyers deserve credit as
well, and there are many others among
the global tobacco control community
who have contributed time and expertise
to such cases, sometimes at considerable
personal sacrifice. But given the enormous
physical, financial and personal burdens
plaintiffs face in going up against the
industry’s armies of well-paid lawyers and
their investigators and consultants, who
leave no stone unturned in excavating the
personal pasts of plaintiffs and trying to
excoriate them in court, it is truly an act
of exceptional courage for those who
bring these cases to carry on.

A few months ago, Dr Howard Engle
died of chronic obstructive lung disease.
He was the Miami Beach paediatrician
whose tobacco lawsuit accusing tobacco
companies of knowingly addicting people
and failing to warn them of the dangers of
continuing to smoke resulted in the largest
punitive damage award in US history. A
Florida jury awarded $145 billion (£89
billion; J102 billion) in punitive damages
against tobacco companies in 2000.

Although the verdict was later over-
turned, the case inspired others, and the
legal process led to more cases brought by
individuals harmed by tobacco products. I
stand with Dr Engle’s family.

This week, a jury awarded $5.3 million
to 92-year-old Leon Barbanell of Florida,
whose wife, Shirley, died with chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease and lung

cancer after smoking Marlboros for some
40 years. It is the sixth verdict for the
plaintiffs in the set of thousands of
lawsuits known as the Engle progeny.
Of course, endless appeals are likely, as
tobacco companies continue to argue in
court that plaintiffs are responsible for
their disease, or (as Philip Morris tried to
argue in the Barbanell case) that they did
not have or did not die from the disease,
or that if they had the disease, it was the
result of some other cause besides ordin-
ary use of the company’s products. And
the awarded amounts are still chump
change for multinationals. I stand with
the Barbanell family.

The day I write this, a jury decided that
cigarette maker Philip Morris USA should
pay $13.8 million in punitive damages to
Jodie Bullock, the daughter of Betty
Bullock, who died of lung cancer in 2003.
I stand with Jodie Bullock. In so many
cases, it is the families who continue to
pursue justice on behalf of their loved ones,
while the companies continue year after
year to obstruct and deny, promoting to
new generations the same deadly products
that have killed Howard, Shirley, Betty,
and millions of others.

While to date, most of the legal cases
are in the United States, there are
courageous challengers in other countries,
including Japan, where the government
itself still is a major owner of Japan
Tobacco. Since 2005, when their case
began, plaintiff Kenichi Morishita has
died of pneumonia and bacterial infection,
leaving 67-year-old cancer patient
Koreyoshi Takahashi and Masanobu
Mizuno, 67 and suffering from emphy-
sema, to continue the fight. They hope
that even if they lose, their case will draw
more attention to the harmfulness of
cigarettes. I stand with the Morishita

family, and with Koreyoshi Takahashi
and Masanobu Mizuno.

In Poland, Stanisław Lubicz-Sienicki is
suing tobacco firms for damages related to
the death of his mother, who died of lung
cancer earlier this year. I stand with
Stanislaw Lubicz-Sienicki. In Israel, a class
action lawsuit is moving ahead on behalf
of a mother who died at 47 from lung
cancer after becoming addicted to
menthol cigarettes. I stand with the
family of that mother, whose name was
not listed in the report. I stand with the
Cippolone family, with Mayola Williams,
with the family of Leslie Whitely, with all
those unnamed here who take on the
tobacco companies. Some day we will
look back on their sacrifices and realise
what groundbreaking work they did,
opening the first cracks in the tobacco
industry’s previously solid wall of denial.

Having cared for many patients who
suffered terribly from tobacco-caused dis-
eases before dying, I know that continuing
a lawsuit while battling for each breath,
trying to stay focused while in excruciating
pain must be exhausting. Yet those who
seek justice do it. They go on. They go on in
the face of scorn from tobacco industry
lawyers, and sometimes from former
friends who do not understand the nature
of addiction and the scale of the deceptions
perpetrated by tobacco companies. They
do it on behalf of their families, on behalf of
those before them whose lives were sacri-
ficed to tobacco company profits, and on
behalf of those coming after, for whom
they seek a better world: a world in which,
perhaps, companies would not knowingly
promote deadly and addictive products. A
world in which, perhaps, those who had
done so would be held accountable at last.
A just world.

Competing interests: Ruth Malone served as a tobacco
industry documents consultant for the United States
Department of Justice in USA vs Philip Morris
et al.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not
externally peer reviewed.

Tobacco Control 2009;18:337.
doi:10.1136/tc.2009.033530

Correspondence to: Ruth E Malone, Editor, Tobacco
Control; ruth.malone@ucsf.edu

Editorial

Tobacco Control October 2009 Vol 18 No 5 337

 o
n
 A

p
ril 5

, 2
0

2
1

 b
y g

u
e
st. P

ro
te

cte
d

 b
y co

p
yrig

h
t.

h
ttp

://to
b
a

cco
co

n
tro

l.b
m

j.co
m

/
T

o
b

 C
o

n
tro

l: first p
u

b
lish

e
d

 a
s 1

0
.1

1
3

6
/tc.2

0
0

9
.0

3
3

5
3

0
 o

n
 2

4
 S

e
p

te
m

b
e

r 2
0

0
9

. D
o
w

n
lo

a
d
e

d
 fro

m
 

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/