Three tobacco firms in Canada have been ordered to pay $15 Billion in damages through a court ruling after they lost a case against them. The companies include: Imperial Tobacco Canada, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald.
The class-action lawsuits were filed in 1998, but only recently went to trial in the courts.
The three companies have argued that Canadians have had a ‘high awareness’ of smoking health risks since the fifties.
However the Quebec Superior Court ruled that the tobacco companies did not properly warn smokers and failed in their general duty ‘not to cause injury to another person’.
The plaintiffs represent nearly one million smokers who were unable to quit or who suffer from throat or lung cancer, or emphysema.
The Quebec case marked the first time tobacco companies had gone to trial in a civil suit in this country and involved two separate groups of plaintiffs: some who became seriously ill from smoking and others who said they couldn’t quit.
More than one million Quebecers were represented and argued the companies were liable because they knew they were putting out a harmful product and hid the health effects of tobacco.
