In what experts say may be the last case of its kind to go to trial, hospitals in Missouri are trying to make tobacco companies pay a hefty medical bill — hundreds of millions of dollars for treating uninsured patients for smoking-related illnesses.
Tobacco companies knew as far back as the 1950s that cigarettes were addictive and harmful, yet continued to manufacture and market them, a lawyer for the hospitals told a St. Louis jury in his opening statement this week. “And they don’t think for one minute about who should pay for it,” the St. Louis Post Dispatch quoted the lawyer, Ken Brostron, as saying.
Smoking opponents once hoped that such third-party suits would deliver a body blow to Big Tobacco but the tactic largely has fizzled. Of the dozens of such cases filed on behalf of unions, pension funds and even foreign governments, The New York Times reports, only two made it to trial. In one of those cases, cigarette makers prevailed. In the other, a plaintiffs’ verdict was overturned on appeal.
Still, in Missouri, 37 plaintiffs — including local and regional hospitals — have persevered in a case that began in 1998. The trial is expected to last six months and, in preparation for it, court officials sent questionnaires to 6,000 prospective jurors.
During his presentation, Brostron piled dozens of packs of cigarettes onto the clerk’s and plaintiffs’ tables. Cigarettes are “defective and unreasonably dangerous” and internal memos and documents from the cigarette companies show they don’t care about their customers, he argued.
But a lawyer for Philip Morris, one of the 11 big tobacco company defendants, countered that saying cigarettes are defective is like saying a knife is defective if you cut yourself while slicing a tomato. “Just because a product is dangerous doesn’t mean it’s defective,” Diane Sullivan said. She also noted that 95 percent of all patients at the hospitals paid their bills and, of the others, only one of every five smoked.
“The truth is, hospitals make money from our bad habits,” Sullivan said.
The plaintiffs had said they were seeking $1 billion but a Philip Morris spokesman said that, as the suit now stands, the claim is down to $477 million for actual damages.
