ROSEN: Was Selma Rosen’s Cancer Tobacco-Related?
June 13, 2005 12:33 pm by Gene BorioMineola, NY. Cornell Medical College’s Dr. David Yankelevitz was asked Monday morning about the nature of Selma Rosen’s lung cancer.
Defense attorney Dan Russo attempted to call his testimony into question by:
1. Pointing out he could not identify when he actually saw Selma Rosen’s 1995 CT-Scan, the one that showed the tell-tale nodule.
2. Pointing out that in all his later scans and reviews of scans, he never compared any of them with the 1995 scan, “so that subsequent treaters would know what you looked at, and what you concluded.”
3. Pointing out that though he has testified the 1995 scan showed signs of emphysema, he did noted that in only one of several reviews of subsequent scans.
4. Establishing that 9 different characteristics of a non-tobacco-related cancer, Bronchioloalveolar Carcinoma (BAC), were consistent with Mrs. Rosen’s manifestations.
On Redirect, attorney Gary Holt, his Little Rock, Ark. accent standing out here on Long Island, established that all of the 9 BAC characteristics cited by Defense were consistent with adenocarcinoma also, and at least one tumor aspect (”ground-glass opacity”) was not present in Mrs. Rosen’s case.
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TIPS FOR TESTIFIERS
All doctors asked by patients to testify against the tobacco industry should bear in mind they will need to take a lot of time off from their hospital, teaching and patient duties to do some serious study. If this means you, you’d be well-advised to:
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Here’s the B&W/RJRT Backgrounder on Rosen
And this is Andrew Harris’ nice New York Law Journal piece
June 14th, 2005 at 12:35 am
“…Time pressures in tobacco litigation are generated mostly by the tobacco companies themselves for their own advantage, quite deliberately and on several levels. Tobacco companies sell an extraordinarily profitable but lethal product which acts by addicting their customers and then killing many of them slowly (though unpredictably) over 20 years or more. Customers are unlikely to commence expensive litigation until they develop lung cancer, by which time they typically have only a year or two to live.
“That makes tobacco litigation relatively easy to defend (especially when you have billions of dollars from a huge addicted captive market, allowing you to employ the ‘best’, most ruthless lawyers). All you have to do is create delay and obstruction (while professing only to be asserting your ordinary rights as a litigant) until your opponent dies…”
Playing for keeps
http://www.ntu.edu.au/faculties/lba/schools/Law/apl/blog/stories/personalinjury/158.htm
June 15th, 2005 at 7:10 am
Its “easy” to defend tobacco lawsuits because (among other reasons) the average schmoe (ie juror) usually doesn’t think its fair to blame tobacco companies for any given individual’s choice to begin (or maintain) smoking despite explicit warning labels, high cost, warnings from friends and physicians, etc.
Most of the time, the old “I didn’t know it could hurt me” story is simply not credible, and that’s why over 90% of the time juries find for tobacco companies in these lawsuits.
June 15th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
“choice”
Ah, “choice”. A frequent flyer in Big Tobacco’s PR.
The truth is: as long as nicotine is addictive, “choice” isn’t what it’s all about.
And as long as juries see that Big Tobacco secretly engineered the product for addiction, and peddled it to 12 year olds, Big Tobacco will have troubles in court.
It’s hard to explain to juries why that’s all right.
Juries who see that aren’t so eager to blame the customer.
It’s hard to sell to juries that it was the customer’s fault that Big Tobacco engineered the product as a highly optimized drug delivery device, and got millions of people addicted to it, virtually all as children.
“I didn’t know it could hurt me”
Ah, “everybody knew,” another page from Big Tobacco’s PR book. And it goes so well with “choice” too.
The truth is: for half a century Big Tobacco did its level best, through obfuscation and denial and outright lying, to “keep doubt alive”. For 50 years Big Tobacco pushed “not proven” “scientists disagree” “controversial” “merely statistical”, etc. etc. etc.
When juries see that, it gets hard to blame the customer for not being fully informed.
As Judge Munter put it, upholding the Henley verdict against Big Tobacco:
“having asserted that causation has not been established, Philip Morris cannot argue persuasively that members of the general public knew better, and by reason of their superior knowlege, are deprived of legal recourse”.
Judge Munter also found:
“It has been known by Philip Morris for decades that the overwhelming majority of adult smokers first begin to smoke while in their teenage years, and that the large majority of long-term and lifetime customers of the cigarette manufacturers are those who have become addicted to nicotine as teenagers…”
“Philip Morris has willfully and consciously marketed its cigarettes to teenagers…”
“Philip Morris has affirmatively misled the American public by advertising there was genuine and legitimate controversy in the scientific community on the subject of smoker health, when in fact there was no such controversy…”
The full opinion is at:
http://www.tobacco.neu.edu/box/BOEKENBox/Henley%20v%20PM/MunterOrderHenley.pdf