The Nation - News from March 27, 1988

A flood of tobacco-liability cases was predicted by lawyers participating in the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University in Boston, which assists attorneys involved in suits against tobacco companies. Of special interest was evidence presented recently in a New Jersey court that cigarette makers were aware up to 40 years ago that smoking might cause cancer and other ailments. Now that the documents are a matter of public record, their availability will substantially reduce the cost of pretrial proceedings in other cases, the attorneys said. The documents gathered for the New Jersey trial include internal tobacco industry memos dating back to 1946. Tobacco industry lawyers disputed the New Jersey documents’ importance and said they had been taken out of context.