Widdick v. Brown & Williamson
"The Tobacco Conspiracy Trial"
Big Tobacco Chips Away at Plaintiff Conspiracy Theory
(May 19) Plaintiff marketing expert Dr. Richard Pollay returned to the stand and continued to illustrate for jurors tobacco companies' alleged conspiracy to conceal and obfuscate the hazards of smoking from the public, particularly deceased smoker Roland Maddox. But, Pollay was forced to concede that he did not know about Maddox's personal access to the media and tobacco advertising and that people can quit smoking under their own will.
Under direct examination from plaintiff attorney Norwood Wilner, Pollay testified about product placement in popular movies, a tobacco industry advertising tactic that extended into the 1980s. According to Pollay, this technique is effective because people do not perceive it as advertising. When consumers see movie characters smoking cigarettes on screen, they see it as part of normal daily life. No warnings accompany these images on the movie screen. Pollay produced a 1984 contract between a film promotion company and Sylvester Stallone in which Stallone was promised $500,000 to place a cigarette brand in five of his feature films. (This deal eventually fell through.)
But during cross-examination, Brown & Williamson attorney Tom Riley focused on the late Roland Maddox's access to mass media, particularly his exposure to cigarette advertising. He sought to cast doubt on the prior testimony of Margaret Maddox, Roland's widow who said that he ignored the mass media and never heard about the dangers of smoking. Riley also tried to discredit Pollay's contention that advertising causes people to smoke. He asked the professor why 17th century Europeans, illiterate Solomon Islanders, and citizens of Communist countries smoked when their societies lacked advertising and public relations campaigns. Pollay conceded that people smoke for a variety of reasons but also insisted that advertising has made smoking much more prevalent than it was before World War I and the advent of modern advertising techniques. He also said that the rate of smokers would be lower without advertising.
Riley also attempted to show that the Big Tobacco Industry group, the Tobacco Industry Research Council and its Scientific Advisory Board did not engage in conspiratorial activities but was open about its purposes (one of which was to fund tobacco research). However, Pollay pointed out that the funds the tobacco companies funnelled into research (approximately $300 million since 1954) are only a fraction of what was spent on advertising. (The industry paid $6 billion for advertising in 1994 alone.) This witness testified that this funding for scientific research was self-serving, a tobacco public relations ploy in itself. But Pollay did admit that it was not unusual for any industry, not just Big Tobacco, to spend billions of dollars for advertising.
In addition, Riley tried to show that the public was well-informed about the dangers of smoking in the 1950s, when Roland Maddox first began smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. At the time, more consumers were abandoning unfiltered cigarettes for the relatively new unfiltered cigarettes, presumably because they knew that unfiltered cigarettes were more dangerous. Riley pointed out that the 1964 Surgeon General's Report said that makers of unfiltered cigarettes saw their market share decrease my one-half during the 1950s. Riley also had Pollay admit that he did not know about Maddox's personal access to the media reports about smoking and that Pollay himself was a former smoker who chose to quit because he was informed about smoking's risks.
After Pollay completed his testimony, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, a public health expert who heads the American Council on Science and Health, took the stand for the plaintiffs. Dr. Whelan's organization examines health scares, and Whelan has written two books on cigarette smoking. Whelan said she was inspired to write about the history of cigarette smoking because she heard so many people say that cigarettes have been around for centuries. But Whelan contended that this is not true; smoking has been around for centuries but not in the form of cigarettes. Most people before the 20th century used pipes or cigars.
Whelan testified that cigarettes deliver tobacco smoke more directly to the lungs than pipes and cigars. She also believed that cigarettes increased the rate of smoking. Her testimony will continue when court resumes on Wednesday morning.
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