Doubt

1 Aug 1983

Rose Cipollone. Rose Cipollone began smoking in 1942 and died of lung cancer in 1984. In 1983 she and her husband sued three cigarette makers, saying her cancer came from their cigarettes; their son carried the suit on after both had died. The makers answered that the federal warning-label laws protected them from liability for their conduct after 1965. The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 partly for them and partly against. She was one of many: individuals brought over 800 claims from the mid-1950s to 1994, and the makers, citing the smoker’s own responsibility among other defenses, “generally prevailed.”

14 Dec 1953

The Plaza. On 14 December 1953 executives of the big cigarette makers met at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Paul Hahn of American Tobacco had telegraphed the invitations. Liggett stayed away, thinking that “in the course of time the whole thing would blow over.” Judge Kessler found it was a strategy meeting to answer the public’s growing anxiety and what the executives “accurately understood to be a major threat to their corporations’ economic future.”

4 Jan 1954

A Frank Statement. The executives hired Hill & Knowlton, a public relations firm that was not a defendant in the later case. On 4 January 1954 a full-page advertisement ran in 448 newspapers, saying “there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes” of lung cancer and pledging “aid and assistance to the research effort.” The committee it announced was renamed the Council for Tobacco Research in 1964. The Tobacco Institute, a trade association, followed in 1958; Hill & Knowlton served both. Judge Kessler found the committee was a vehicle to “deny the harms of smoking and reassure the public.”

Feb 1953

Ten months earlier. In February 1953 Claude Teague, a research scientist at R. J. Reynolds, wrote a report titled “Survey of Cancer Research with Emphasis on Possible Carcinogens from Tobacco.” As Judge Kessler quotes it, he wrote that studies of clinical data tend to confirm the link between heavy, long smoking and lung cancer. She found that Reynolds recognized smoking as a cause of disease in mice as early as 1953.

11 Jan 1964

January 1964. Surgeon General Luther Terry’s advisory committee, helped by 155 consultants, published its report on 11 January. It judged smoking “a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” It put the lung cancer risk of average male cigarette smokers at roughly 9 to 10 times that of non-smokers, and of heavy smokers at least 20 times.

12 Jan 1964

Doubt is our product. The next day the Tobacco Institute’s executive committee met; the court quotes it calling it “of prime importance that the industry maintain a united front.” George Weissman of Philip Morris wrote that the company must give smokers “a psychological crutch.” In June Bowman Gray of Reynolds told Congress that many scientists thought “it has not been established that smoking causes disease.” The court also quotes an undated internal Brown & Williamson paper, with no author named, and a Tobacco Institute man, William Kloepfer, writing that its position “may be subject to a finding, that we are making false or misleading statements.”

1972

The product. In a 1972 report, Philip Morris’s William Dunn wrote that nicotine “is the industry’s product.” His advice, quoted by the court, was to think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day’s supply of nicotine. At Reynolds that year, Claude Teague wrote that “the dominant specification should be nicotine delivery.” Judge Kessler found that the makers falsely denied manipulating cigarette design and composition to assure nicotine levels that create and sustain addiction. The D.C. Circuit listed that finding among the strands of the fraud.

14 Apr 1994

Under oath. On 14 April 1994 the chief executives of six makers testified before a House subcommittee: William Campbell of Philip Morris, James Johnston of Reynolds, Donald Johnston of American, Thomas Sandefur of Brown & Williamson, Andrew Tisch of Lorillard and Edward Horrigan of Liggett. Campbell, Sandefur, Tisch and Donald Johnston said they believed nicotine is not addictive. James Johnston said cigarettes and nicotine “do not meet the classic definitions of addiction,” and Horrigan said Liggett does not manipulate nicotine to “hook or addict smokers.” Judge Kessler set the testimony out in her findings but held it was petitioning Congress, “not actionable.” Her fraud findings rest on statements to smokers and the public. On those, the makers said they “merely clung to the earlier, narrower, definitions” of addiction; the court found a “concerted effort to misrepresent the difficulty of quitting smoking.”

17 Aug 2006

Light and low tar. The government alleged that the makers sold “low tar” and “light” cigarettes as less harmful than others when they were not. Judge Kessler found the denials false, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed. It rejected the makers’ argument that the Federal Trade Commission had blessed the labels, which it called “entirely foreclosed” by a Supreme Court ruling. Her order barred the descriptors; the appeals court narrowed the ban to exempt foreign activity with no domestic effect.

31 Mar 1981

Tomorrow’s customer. A Philip Morris report of 31 March 1981, quoted by the court, said the teenage years are when brand choice is made. Judge Kessler found that the makers “do market to young people, including those under twenty-one, as well as those under eighteen,” to replace smokers who die. The D.C. Circuit did not decide the makers’ challenge to this part, noting the district court ordered no remedy specifically about youth marketing. The 1998 settlement bans targeting youth, and cartoons.

Mar 1997

One breaks ranks. Liggett had stayed out of the 1953 meetings but later joined the enterprise, and its chief testified in 1994. In 1996 it cooperated with state attorneys general, and in March 1997 it agreed to say publicly that smoking causes lung cancer and that cigarettes and nicotine are addictive. Its releases of documents produced “the first judicial decisions compelling the major tobacco companies to release privileged documents.” Judge Kessler held Liggett liable for what it did earlier, found it withdrew from the conspiracy in 1997, and the injunction covered only the other seven makers.

23 Nov 1998

The states sue. From 1994, beginning with Mississippi, states sued the makers over the health-care costs of smoking. Four settled separately in 1997 and 1998. On 23 November 1998 forty-six states and the four largest makers, with Liggett, signed the Master Settlement Agreement. It is not a verdict: it records that the defendants “denied each and every one” of the allegations, and says it is not “an admission” of “any liability or any wrongdoing.” It ordered the Tobacco Institute and the Council dissolved. It settled the states’ suits only, not smokers’ own claims. By one count the makers will have paid about $106 billion through 2015.

17 Aug 2006

The papers. The settlement made the makers put documents from the lawsuits online until 30 June 2010; the federal judgment extended that, and in 2015 the Public Health Law Center reported they remained in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. Judge Kessler found that the makers “did in fact suppress research and destroy documents.” Their answer was that these were “a string of isolated instances which prove nothing.” She added that some destruction was “part of larger, legitimate institutional document retention policies,” while at other times, “as with the BAT Group,” it was “clearly intended” to hide damaging papers.

17 Aug 2006

Fraud. On 22 September 1999 the United States sued nine cigarette makers and two trade bodies under the racketeering law. On 17 August 2006 Judge Gladys Kessler held the defendants liable. The D.C. Circuit summed up her findings as a scheme to defraud smokers by falsely denying the health effects, the addiction, the nicotine design, the harm of “light” cigarettes, the marketing to youth, and the harm of secondhand smoke, and by suppressing documents. She found “overwhelming evidence” for “most” of the government’s case. She found the government did not prove the makers deliberately declined to market safer designs. Altria, the holding company, was held liable for its own acts.

22 May 2009

What she could order. The government had sought about $280 to $289 billion in disgorgement; an earlier appeals ruling barred it, since the racketeering law allows only forward-looking remedies. Judge Kessler ordered the makers to stop false statements and health descriptors such as “light,” to make corrective statements, and to create document depositories. On 22 May 2009 the D.C. Circuit affirmed liability “in its entirety” except for the Council and the Institute, already dissolved, and sent four points of the remedy back. It noted the makers’ claim that they had “admitted for years” that smoking causes cancer, and the district court’s finding that their “essential position” was “virtually unchanged.” The Supreme Court denied review in 2010.

25 Apr 2017

Corrective statements. In 2012 Judge Kessler set the wording of statements the makers must publish on five subjects. Each opened with “A Federal Court has ruled that” the companies “deliberately deceived the American public.” In 2015 the D.C. Circuit held that the court “exceeded its authority under RICO,” because the preambles “disclose defendants’ prior deceptive conduct” and the law allows only forward-looking remedies. A 2016 rewrite kept “Here is the truth”; in 2017 the court cut it. The bulleted facts were left standing in 2015. The fraud finding was not reversed; only the opening sentence was.

2 Nov 2026

In their own words. In 1954: “We believe the products we make are not injurious to health.” In 1998 each maker “specifically disclaims and denies any liability or wrongdoing whatsoever” in the settlement. Today Philip Morris USA’s website says “there is no safe cigarette” and that it “agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus” that smoking is addictive and causes disease. No present statement from Reynolds or Liggett is in this story’s record.

26 Jun 2026

The toll. Counts depend on who counts what, and when. The statement the court ordered in 2012 says smoking kills on average 1,200 Americans every day. Judge Kessler’s 2006 findings put the yearly toll of smoking and secondhand smoke together at nearly 440,000 Americans. The World Health Organization’s June 2026 sheet counts more than 7 million deaths a year worldwide, including over 1.6 million non-smokers. These measure different groups and years, so they are given side by side, not added.

1965–1967

Sugar. In 2016 three UCSF researchers reported from Sugar Research Foundation papers that it paid Hegsted and McGandy, two of the three authors of a 1967 review overseen by Fredrick Stare, $6,500 in all, and that its funding was not disclosed. The review “downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor.” The researchers add that there is “no direct evidence” the industry wrote or changed the manuscript; their evidence of influence is “circumstantial.” The Sugar Association says the foundation “should have exercised greater transparency” but that disclosure standards “were not the norm they are today,” and that “sugar does not have a unique role in heart disease.” The paper adds that access to industry documents has been “a major factor behind successful global tobacco control policies.”

23 Aug 2017

Oil. In 2017 Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes compared 187 ExxonMobil documents. Of those taking a position, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledged human-caused climate change, against 12% of the company’s newspaper advertorials, which were published by Mobil and ExxonMobil. They concluded the company misled the public, and say they cannot judge whether any law was broken. ExxonMobil called the study “inaccurate and preposterous” and said it obscured the separateness of Exxon and Mobil; the authors reply they attributed each advertorial to its company. Neither paper compares oil with tobacco itself. Their reference lists carry Oreskes and Conway’s 2010 “Merchants of Doubt” and a 2007 report titled “How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics”; the comparison is theirs, and no court has made it.