Imperial Tobacco, one of Britain's biggest cigarette manufacturers, is planning to deny a proved link between smoking and lung cancer in the Scottish Court of Session, where it is fighting a damages claim from a former smoker. It is the first such case in the United Kingdom to reach the stage of a full hearing.
Margaret McTear, the widow of Alfred McTear, who died of lung cancer aged 48 in 1993, is suing Imperial Tobacco for £500 000 ($830 000; €710 000). Mr McTear lodged the claim shortly before his death.
The court heard the transcript of an interview that Mr McTear gave to his lawyer a week before his death in which he blamed the advertising that was current in 1964, when he took up the habit. He said that if the advertisements had carried warnings, he would never have begun smoking. Warnings were introduced in Britain in 1971.
He told his counsel, Colin McEachran QC: "I am a reasonably sensible lad. I don't think I would have taken up smoking if I had known all these risks were involved." He said he was completely addicted by the time warnings were introduced. He eventually quit in 1992, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
The company's defence team spent the first two days in court trying to disprove Mr McTear's assertion that he was "sensible." It said Mr McTear had been to prison 11 times and had been convicted, among other things, of fire raising after he tried to set fire to himself in his home. His wife acknowledged that he had an alcohol problem and was sometimes violent towards his family.
When Ms McTear's counsel objected to the evidence, Michael Jones QC, for Imperial Tobacco, said: "This case is about Alfred McTear and his lifestyle choices, including his decision to smoke and carry on smoking."
The company has also filed papers into court which, according to the Observer newspaper, say: "Cigarette smoking has not been scientifically established as a cause of lung cancer. The cause or causes of lung cancer are unknown." The company says studies such as the groundbreaking 1950 research carried out by Professor Richard Doll report a "statistical association," but "also report cancer to be statistically associated with many other factors." Professor Doll will give evidence in the case, which is expected to last four months.
Imperial Tobacco will also make the apparently contradictory argument that by 1964 plentiful evidence was available about the dangers of smoking. It has filed in evidence newspaper clippings of the period with headlines such as "Cigarette tar causes cancer," and "Million deaths from lung cancer by end of century."
They will also mention a treatise written by King James in 1604, which called tobacco "dangerous to the lungs" and imposed the first import duty explicitly as a public health measure.
A group action in the English courts on behalf of 53 former smokers collapsed in 1999 after a High Court judge refused to exercise his discretion to allow claims brought more than three years after a lung cancer diagnosis to go ahead. Mr Justice Wright made it clear in his judgment that, in his view, even those cases filed in time had no great prospect of success.