LAWSUITS NEWS & LEGAL INFORMATION
Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to Pay $6.25 Million
This is a settlement for the Personal Injury lawsuit.
Washington, DC: The country' two biggest tobacco companies have agreed to improve public access to internal tobacco-industry documents and to pay $6.25 million into a court fund that will go to support the country' largest online collection of tobacco documents, the Justice Department announced today. The agreement is part of the United States' landmark case against the country' largest cigarette companies, filed in federal court in Washington. The settlement is with Philip Morris USA and its parent Altria Group, and with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
The agreement resolves a dispute between the tobacco companies and the United States about the online document databases that the court ordered in 2006. The court ruled then that Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and other cigarette companies had suppressed internal documents, information and research, as part of a broad campaign to deliberately deceive the American people about smoking' health effects, nicotine addiction, manipulating cigarette design to increase addiction, light- and low-tar cigarettes and marketing to youth. As a result, the court ordered the companies to provide public access to all documents they turned over in all smoking-and-health lawsuits in the United States for the next 15 years, through online document websites and through a hard-copy archive known as the Minnesota Depository.
The agreement resolves a longstanding dispute over certain obligations the tobacco companies have with respect to these online databases. The agreement requires Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to pay a total of $6.25 million into a court fund over the next four years. The court fund will turn the money over to the University of California - San Francisco (UCSF), which runs the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu. The UCSF collection went online in 2000, and provides Internet access to more than 13 million internal tobacco company documents, many of them originally revealed during lawsuits against individual tobacco companies. Researchers have published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles about the tobacco industry' actions and internal knowledge, based on documents uncovered in the UCSF collection. The money UCSF receives under this proposal will be used to improve access to and the functionality of its online database of tobacco documents.
Published on Dec-15-11
The agreement resolves a dispute between the tobacco companies and the United States about the online document databases that the court ordered in 2006. The court ruled then that Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and other cigarette companies had suppressed internal documents, information and research, as part of a broad campaign to deliberately deceive the American people about smoking' health effects, nicotine addiction, manipulating cigarette design to increase addiction, light- and low-tar cigarettes and marketing to youth. As a result, the court ordered the companies to provide public access to all documents they turned over in all smoking-and-health lawsuits in the United States for the next 15 years, through online document websites and through a hard-copy archive known as the Minnesota Depository.
The agreement resolves a longstanding dispute over certain obligations the tobacco companies have with respect to these online databases. The agreement requires Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to pay a total of $6.25 million into a court fund over the next four years. The court fund will turn the money over to the University of California - San Francisco (UCSF), which runs the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu. The UCSF collection went online in 2000, and provides Internet access to more than 13 million internal tobacco company documents, many of them originally revealed during lawsuits against individual tobacco companies. Researchers have published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles about the tobacco industry' actions and internal knowledge, based on documents uncovered in the UCSF collection. The money UCSF receives under this proposal will be used to improve access to and the functionality of its online database of tobacco documents.
Legal Help
If you have a similar problem and would like to be contacted by a lawyer at no cost or obligation, please click the link below.Published on Dec-15-11
