A Quebec judge on Monday ordered three tobacco companies to pay $12 billion in punitive and moral damages to about one million smokers who suffered from diseases and addiction caused by smoking cigarettes.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan ordered Imperial Tobacco to pay $8.4 billion, Rothmans Benson & Hedges (RBH), $2.5 billion, and JTI-MacDonald (JTIM), $1.6 billion to the Quebec plaintiffs in two class action suits.
"Over the nearly 50 years of the (class-action period), and in the 17 years since, the companies earned billions of dollars at the expense of the lungs, the throats and the general well-being of their customers," Riordan wrote in his ruling, according to National Post. "If the Companies are allowed to walk away unscathed now, what would be the message to other industries that today or tomorrow find themselves in a similar moral conflict?"
The ruling provides for the distribution of the $12 billion as follows:
- $80,000 for each plaintiff who developed cancer and began smoking before January 1976;
- $72,000 for each plaintiff who developed cancer and started smoking after January 1976;
- $24,000 for each plaintiff who developed emphysema and started smoking before January 1976;
- $19,200 for each plaintiff who developed emphysema and started smoking after January 1976; and
- $104 for each plaintiff who were unable to quit smoking.
Lise Blais, husband of Jean-Yves Blais, who initiated one of the lawsuits, expressed relief from the judgment in a press conference.
"Seventeen years is long, but I had my hope that we were going to win - and we did," Blais said, according to CBC News.
The tobacco companies will appeal the ruling.
"Plaintiffs sought money for over a million people but not a single class member, in nearly three years of trial, testified under oath. Not one showed up to say that he or she was unaware of the risks of smoking. We believe that, in light of prevailing law and common sense, the judgment should not stand," RBH spokesperson Anne Edwards said in a press release.
"The Québec Court of Appeal has already ruled - in an earlier appeal in these very cases - that by bringing a class action, plaintiffs must prove not only that defendants engaged in wrongdoing but that this wrongdoing caused injury to every member of the class. The trial court had no evidence to conclude that any class members smoked and were injured due to any alleged wrongdoing by RBH, much less regarding the number of class members on which its judgment is based," Edwards said.
JTIM echoed the same argument of RBH.
"Since the 1950s, Canadians have had a very high awareness of the health risks of smoking," JTIM also said, according to Yahoo! Finance. "That awareness has been reinforced by the health warnings printed on every legal cigarette package for more than 40 years."
