Tobacco On Trial

The Government presented the first part of its case this morning as it began to delineate what it called the ’seven pillars of the overarching scheme to defraud.’ It enumerated the pillars as follows:

1. The adverse health effects of cigarettes and of secondhand smoke
2. The myth of the independent research
3. Addiction
4. Nicotine manipulation
5. Light cigarettes
6. Youth marketing
7. Supression of evidence

The presentation seemed long and a bit loose in general. The presenters at various times misquoted or mispoke the words from the documents. Judge Kessler interrupted the presenters serveral times, at one point anticipating the industry’s argument on a point that Sharon Eubank was making. Ms. Eubank affirmed that she knew the industry would indeed make that argument and that DOJ was prepared to respond to it during the trial proper.

Some of the documents did not seem particularly trenchant. Kessler even interrupted once to ask how exactly a particular document was germaine to the case.

A few of the documents seemed to originate outside the Minnesota depository; however most of them were were from the 1998 Minnesota trial. It’s clear this case, as so many in the last ten years, would never have come about without Hubert Humphrey III’s steadfast demand that the industry give up its documents.

The trial continues at 2PM.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.