Davis Urges Lungren to Join Tobacco Suits

Turning up the pressure on California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to join the legal onslaught against tobacco, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis has sent a letter urging Lungren to follow the lead of 16 other states by suing tobacco firms to recover tax funds used to treat smoking-related ailments.

With Davis, a Democrat, and Lungren, a Republican, considered possible gubernatorial opponents in 1998, the appeal to Lungren had clear political overtones.

But it also reflected his estrangement from a growing movement in California--the only state in which city and county legal officers have taken on the industry themselves.

Just last week, 10 California counties and the city of San Jose joined San Francisco and Los Angeles County in filing suit to recoup local tax expenditures for care of indigents sickened by smoking.

In a two-page letter to Lungren dated Tuesday, Davis said that although the county lawsuits could succeed in recovering “costs incurred by the counties themselves,” they would not recoup “the state’s Medi-Cal share, which is twice as large.”

But Lungren called the appeal politically motivated and said he has no immediate plans to sue the industry.

“We’ve looked at this, and we’ll continue to look at this, but I don’t play political games with this issue and I never have,” Lungren said in a phone interview.

In a jab at Democrats, Lungren noted that tort reform legislation shepherded by former Democratic House Speaker Willie Brown in 1987 made tobacco companies immune to lawsuits under state product liability laws.

But Davis and other critics said the industry’s exemption from product liability claims has not stopped the counties from proceeding on other grounds.

Their lawsuits claim the tobacco companies fraudulently concealed the hazards of their products, thereby engaging in an unfair business practice under the state Business and Professions Code.

Lungren said his stand should not be misunderstood as support for tobacco, adding that he believes in higher cigarette taxes to pay for health care and strong enforcement of laws barring tobacco sales to underage youths. But he said that instead of litigation, Congress should impose “some sort of global settlement” that would give tobacco companies immunity from lawsuits in exchange for money and making public all their scientific data on smoking.