Winnipeg Free Press

06 October 1999

Gov't 'stacks deck' in seeking cig damages

Vancouver-The B.C. government is trying is trying to stack the deck and co-opt the justice system in its attempt to wrest billions of dollars in health-care costs from cigarette-makers, a tobacco industry lawyer says.

In a case closely watched by other provinces and the anti-smoking lobby, the industry is challenging the constitutionality of B.C. legislation that makes it easier for the government to sue cigarette manufacturers for the costs of treating smoking related diseases.

The Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act not only improperly targets a specific industry, it undermines the whole rule of law, lawyer Jack Giles, representing tobacco giant RJR-Macdonald, told the B.C. Supreme Court in opening arguments yesterday.

The law, first proclaimed in 1997 and amended last year, allows the government to set the ground rules for a lawsuit it intends to file, he said.

It also requires the court to accept the government's data on the direct health-care costs the province claims stem from smoking, the industry contends.

'Unthinkable'

This affects the judge's independence by impairing the ability to determine the facts and properly apply the law, said Giles.

"It is unthinkable that anyone, least of all the government, can tell a judge how he or she is to go about deciding a specific case, let alone if the government is on one side of that case", Giles told Justice Ronald Holmes.

The legislation also violates the unwritten rule against retroactively penalizing anyone for something that was previously legal.

"Such laws always were, in my submission, an abomination", said Giles who is the lead lawyer in a battery of about 20 lawyers representing Canadian cigarette makers and their parent companies.

The fact that the target of the B.C. government's suit is something as unpopular as the tobacco industry should not negate the principles of justice, Giles argued.

"The rights of the best of us are no better than the rights of those publically proclaimed by some of the worst of us", he said.