No, what we’re talking about is called harrassment. The industry uses legal tools to harrass and discredit researchers it doesn’t like.

When the industry demands names of three- to six-year-old children, that’s not discovery. That’s forcing a researcher to violate written confidentiality agreements:

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp/articles/lcp59dSummer1996p159.htm

The history is clear: this is an industry that’s ready, willing, and able to use courts and trials as opportunities to harrass its critics. And if possible to silence them.

Spare the violins. Nobody is stopping anyone from doing any research here. UM can gather all the data it likes, and do all the analysis it wants, and publish anything it wants, and there isnt a damn thing tobacco can do about that. If U.M doesn’t want to give Tobacco the data, no-one can force them to, either.

On the other hand, this is a public trial. No-one is forcing the gov’t to quote these studies. If the Department of Justice wants to admit studies based on that data into evidence, and use them at trial, then Tobacco has every legitimate right to take a look at the data! That’s called “discovery”, and that’s how our legal system works.

Is Judge Kessler supposed to simply stipulate that everything U.M publishes is absolutely correct without checking or without giving ANYONE else the opportunity to check on that either? Would you care to extend that same courtesy to the Tobacco industry? Somehow I doubt that.

The fact that after five full years of litigating this matter, the gov’t feels the necessity of introducing new evidence at this eleventh hour speaks very badly of the strength of their case. Its hardly tobacco’s fault that the Gov’t entire action was based on a previously untested, and now proven illegal interpretation of RICO (1964)a.

Frankly, at this point the gov’t should feel blessed that Judge Kesser is even allowing them to bring in ANY new evidence, considering how late in the trial process it is, and how much the DOJ stalled discovery at the beginning of the case.

“The case of Dr. Paul M. Fischer of the Medical College of Georgia. In 1991, Fischer and others released a study showing that Joe Camel, the cigarette cartoon symbol, was as well known to 6-year-olds as Mickey Mouse.”

“Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds sought the details of Fischer’s work, including the names and telephone numbers of all children who participated in the study and the addresses, phone numbers, and background information of the people who interviewed them. The company argued that Fischer, as a public employee, had to release this and other information under Georgia’s open records law. The tobacco company won, though the state law was quickly amended so the children’s names remained confidential.

“‘What happened to me was very clearly not an attempt to understand the science. This was an attempt to shut down my research operation,’ said Fischer.”

Boston Globe, February 11, 1999
Disclosure Law Worries Researchers
Aaron Zitner
http://internet.ggu.edu/university_library/if/disc.html

“Shortly after his study was published, Reynolds’ lawyers slapped Fischer with a subpoena, demanding all of his notes and the names and telephone numbers of the 229 children he interviewed.”
Newsday, around June 22 1997
http://www.no-smoking.org/june97/6-22-97-1.html

“R.J. Reynolds subpoenaed the research records of the scientists who had conducted the original studies: Dr. Fischer, then a professor of family medicine at the Medical College of Georgia; Joseph DiFranza, an associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester; and John Pierce, a professor and head of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of California at San Diego.”

“R.J. Reynolds sought the records to fight a lawsuit filed in California by a woman seeking to force the company to place health warnings on promotional products such as caps and T-shirts. The woman cited the medical-journal articles.

“The company demanded that the researchers supply the names and telephone numbers of all of the children who had participated in the studies; all drafts of the studies’ design; all notes pertaining to the studies; and the names and telephone numbers of all respondents who had been excluded.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 14, 1994
http://chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-41.dir/issue-16.dir/16a02601.htm

Dr. Fischer gives an analysis of the episode in a paper that appeared in the journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, 159, Summer 1996: Science And Subpoenas: When do the Courts Become Instruments of Manipulation?” http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp/articles/lcp59dSummer1996p159.htm

I wonder who in this present case asserted that it was necessary to have private details of Legacy’s research or the research couldn’t be admitted into evidence?

Such an assertion would be consistent with the tobacco industry’s history of intimidating resarchers who do research it doesn’t like.