Tobacco’s Immunity From Liability Suits Targeted

Tobacco’s immunity from lawsuits under California’s product liability law would be repealed under legislation introduced Wednesday in the state Senate.

Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) said the 1987 statute that holds tobacco immune from product liability lawsuits “is an egregious example of special interest legislation and is unjustified.”

Kopp said no other state gives the tobacco industry that kind of special treatment and that Californians “should not have the right to recover for injury or death caused by tobacco products abrogated or impeded.”

Tobacco’s exemption from product liability laws was a small part of a detailed and far-reaching tort reform compromise negotiated almost a decade ago among insurance, trial lawyer and medical lobbyists and key legislators.

The measure became known as “the napkin bill” because the major provisions of the compromise were written on a tablecloth at Frank Fat’s, a restaurant near the state Capitol, during a long negotiating session over dinner.

It specifically cited tobacco, along with sugar, castor oil, alcohol and butter, among examples of common consumer products exempted because they were “known to be unsafe by the ordinary consumer.”

Sandy Harrison, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who became the lead legislative author of the napkin bill, said Lockyer is in Egypt and was not aware of Kopp’s proposal.

But Harrison said Lockyer supported the exemption for tobacco as a matter of personal responsibility and that Lockyer believed that “anyone who smokes today is either stupid or suicidal and should not be compensated for that conduct.”

Kopp said he hoped that there would be broad legislative support for his bill. He said legislators today are more aware of the cost to taxpayers of tobacco-caused illnesses and deaths and the political costs to politicians of appearing to be beholden to the tobacco industry.