In the largest suit yet, US sues the tobacco industry

The case is one of the most expensive ever litigated. According to the Department of Justice, it has spent $135 million so far on the litigation. That is far more than the antitrust suit against Microsoft, which at one point the Justice Department said cost $9 million but other some news reports estimated at $30 million to $60 million.

Much of the expense is from managing and reviewing documents. So far, the government has made available to the defendants 80 million pages of documents that it may use. Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds estimate they have shown the government 42 million pages.

Even so, Judge Gladys Kessler fined Philip Morris USA $2.75 million this summer for the possible loss of some e-mails by employees.

William Ohlemeyer, associate general counsel of Altria Group, says the lawsuit is easily twice as time consuming as any of its past cases. "More time and more people means more money," he says.

Besides Philip Morris, the other defendants in the case are R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, British American Tobacco, and Liggett Group.

So far there have been substantial legal skirmishes in pre-trial maneuvers. Judge Kessler has thrown out a key feature of the lawsuit - the government's attempt to be reimbursed for money spent by Medicare to treat tobacco-related diseases. The tobacco companies are also appealing her decision that the government can seek disgorgement of past profits. That decision may come down during the trial.

According to Mr. Ohlemeyer, the government came up with its estimate of possible profits by estimating the amount of money spent by anyone under the age of 21 who smoked five cigarettes a day. This comes to $70 billion. Then, the government estimated the economic benefit to the tobacco companies of having this cash, resulting in a total of $280 billion.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice refused comment since the issue is under litigation.

Tobacco companies maintain that the government would be hard-pressed to prove that every dollar they earned was the result of fraud, especially since cigarette packs have had health warnings on them since 1966. "Not only were our actions completely legal, but much of it was regulated over that period of time," says Mr. Pfeil.

However, the industry will also have to defend its actions, which included raising doubts that cigarettes caused cancer. For example, in 1987, Brennan Moran, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, one of the non-company defendants in the case, told a Monitor reporter that claims of health problems related to secondhand smoke were "unsubstantiated."

Even as late as 1993, the industry was trying to raise doubts about an EPA report on secondhand smoke. "This is a report which has been criticized by a number of scientists in a number of disciplines," said Ms. Dawson (nee Moran).

Now, Philip Morris among others calls secondhand smoke dangerous.

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