ASH Daily News for 23/11/2000

ASH, 102 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4HW Tel: 0207 739 5902
Fax: 0207 613 0531

ASH Daily News

23 November 2000

Headlines

'Florida court reinstates award in tobacco lawsuit'
'Tobacco industry workers lobby Parliament'
'Drug harvest from GM plant'

Full Text

'Florida court reinstates award in tobacco lawsuit'

The Wall Street Journal Europe reports 'The Florida Supreme Court reinstated
a $750,000 award' for a former smoker, Grady Carter, against Brown &
Williamson, a unit of British American Tobacco. The article adds it is,
'only the second time in 40 years of anti-smoking litigation that a tobacco
company has been ordered to pay damages.'

The following analysis of this verdict is provided by Richard Daynard of the
Tobacco Products Liability Project, "This is a wonderful decision for
several reasons:

(1) The industry and its Wall Street sycophants had made a big deal
about never having had a damage award against it affirmed on appeal. They
particularly loved the District Court of Appeals' reversal of the Carter
verdict, since Carter had been the first winning Third Wave case, had cost
the industry over $10 billion in stock market losses, and had forced the
industry executives to start thinking settlement.

(2) The court blew the whistle on a line of reasoning which said that
the U.S. Supreme Court's Cipollone case had pre-empted all failure-to-warn
claims after 1969. In fact, the Court had pre-empted only claims that the
industry had failed to put more effective warnings in their "advertising or
promotion." The Florida court pointed out that there are other ways the
industry could have warned, including through "advertorials".

(3) The hostile attitude of Florida's First District Court of Appeals
had discouraged Woody Wilner and others from bringing further cases in
Jacksonville. Today's decision will make clear to that appellate court that
its previous attitude will not be tolerated.

(4) There's another significant case making its way to the Florida
Supreme Court. Many Wall Street analysts had assured their clients that
Engle would never survive at this level. Their reasoning, as far as I can
tell, was that since other courts, particularly federal courts, are hostile
to tobacco litigation, the Florida Supreme Court must be hostile to tobacco
litigation as well. This reasoning no longer holds any water."

Source: Wall Street Journal Europe, 23 November 2000, Richard Daynard, 22
November 2000
Link: http://www.flcourts.org/sct/sctdocs/ops/sc94797.pdf

Tobacco industry workers lobby Parliament

The Belfast Telegraph reports that, 'Tobacco workers from Northern Ireland
were among hundreds who joined a Tobacco Workers' Alliance protest in London
today in a bid to save the United Kingdom tobacco industry.'

Source: Belfast Telegraph, 23 November 2000

'Drug harvest from GM plant'

The Daily Telegraph reports that, 'A genetically modified plant that
releases drugs in droplets of dew has been created by scientists. Plants can
be engineered to produce everything from vaccines to plastics but it is
still relatively difficult to extract the proteins efficiently.'

The article adds, 'A team led by Dr Ilya Raskin of Rutgers University, New
Jersey, created a tobacco plant that produced three foreign proteins, New
Scientist magazine reports today. Pressure inside the plant built up
overnight, when it lost less moisture, and the fluids were squeezed to the
surface of its leaves, allowing them to be easily harvested.'

Source: Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2000
Link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003868402427914&rtmo=VkjFPkPx&atmo=rrrrrrrq
&pg=/et/00/11/23/nbul23.html#go5 (please note you may have to cut and paste
this link into your web browser)

Karl Brookes
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
London
EC2A 4HW
Tel: 00 44 207 739 5902
Fax: 00 44 207 613 0531
http://www.ash.org.uk/smuggling/