In 1998, main tobacco corporations reached a historic authorized settlement with states that had sued them over the well being care prices of smoking-related sicknesses. But particular person people who smoke have continued to sue, and to today the tobacco business stays tied up in tons of of courtroom fights with sickened people who smoke, or with members of the family who misplaced a liked one to most cancers, coronary heart illness or different smoking-related sickness.
These days, tobacco corporations now not attempt to declare that cigarettes aren’t dangerous — actually, in an ironic reversal, a favourite authorized protection in present instances is the argument that almost everybody was conscious of the risks, even again within the 1950s. To shore up this controversial declare, often called the “common knowledge” protection, tobacco corporations typically enlist teachers as professional witnesses. These professors are ceaselessly historians or political scientists who are likely to preserve these profitable aspect gigs walled off from the remainder of their educational work. And their testimony will help tobacco corporations restrict damages.
Professor John Geer, a political scientist and dean of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University, has consulted on behalf of tobacco corporations from 2004 to at the very least mid-2018, in line with courtroom paperwork. The charges from authorized corporations signify as a lot as 1 / 4 of his annual earnings.
In a 2014 deposition videotaped simply off Vanderbilt’s campus, Geer was then vice provost. He stares straight forward with an iced espresso at his aspect, studying glasses perched on his nostril. A courtroom reporter swears him in, and he begins to make his case:
“I have studied a lot of polls, and I’m confident of my opinion of the public being broadly aware of the dangers of smoking by the mid-1950s. The data are rock-solid clear,” Geer says within the video.
This argument is a part of the “common knowledge” protection, however many of the witnesses who make it are usually not specialists within the historical past of public well being. Geer, as an example, makes a speciality of political science and directs the Vanderbilt Poll. Others who’ve testified on behalf of tobacco corporations are presidential historians or Civil War specialists; they embody distinguished historian and creator Stephen Ambrose, who died in 2002 of smoking-related lung most cancers.
Stanford University historical past professor Robert Proctor, who wrote a guide in regards to the tobacco business known as Golden Holocaust, says most of those teachers have by no means printed any analysis about cigarettes as a result of their opinions can’t stand as much as peer evaluation.
“They erase history by acting as if the things we know today have always been known,” he stated.
Proctor is amongst a smaller group of teachers who testify in opposition to tobacco corporations, on behalf of people who smoke coping with most cancers, persistent lung illness and coronary heart issues.
‘Under The Radar’
In his book, Proctor lists the professors recognized to have labored on behalf of tobacco corporations. He says most professional witnesses keep away from drawing consideration to themselves.
“Experts often don’t even put it down on their CVs, their resumes — it’s absent,” Proctor stated. “That’s one of the problems. It’s flying under the radar.”
Geer makes no point out of his consulting work — which pays greater than $300 an hour — in his 17-page curriculum vitae. That doc does embody an in depth account of his pursuits on and off campus, right down to particular person visitor lectures and media appearances.
“It’s not relevant,” Geer informed Nashville legal professional Kenneth Byrd throughout one deposition. “If I published something from this, I’d list it.”
Even essentially the most energetic professional witnesses for the tobacco business haven’t printed analysis on tobacco. They embody the University of Tennessee’s Robert Norrell, who research race and the American South; and Elizabeth Cobbs, a historian at Texas A&M and Michael Schaller, a professor emeritus on the University of Arizona, who each concentrate on international relations. Their names are amongst 50 that seem in a database kept by Ramses Delafontaine, a historian who wrote a guide about his friends working for the tobacco business.
In depositions, some declare to make greater than $100,000 a 12 months for his or her work on tobacco litigation. None accepted requests for interviews.
Geer did problem a statement to Vanderbilt’s scholar newspaper, Hustler, saying he’s not a supporter of “Big Tobacco.”
“I truly understand and deeply respect those students who disagree with me having taken on this kind of work,” Geer informed Hustler. “I do see their perspective and value it. Perhaps my fondest hope is that we all appreciate that disagreement itself is often an engine for change.”
Interpreting The Polls
The tobacco business’s professors are primarily historians. Their professional reviews pull newspaper clippings and excerpts from college textbooks to point out judges that the smoker in query in all probability ran throughout warnings about cigarettes. And most of the business’s witnesses lean closely on the identical Gallup ballot from 1954 that signifies 90% of Americans had heard smoking might trigger lung most cancers.
But in 1998, Gallup informed the tobacco business to cease utilizing this polling out of context. First, the corporate despatched a letter to historian Lacy Ford on the University of South Carolina. (Ford had testified on behalf of R.J. Reynolds, citing the ballot.) Then Gallup officers presented a paper at a conference calling Ford’s interpretation an “egregious error” that neglected the distinction between being conscious of hazard and really believing smoking could cause a lethal sickness.
“A review of historical Gallup surveys suggests that there was, in fact, a high degree of public doubt and confusion about the dangers of smoking in the 1950s and 60s. There may have been widespread awareness of the controversy over smoking, but public belief that smoking was linked to lung cancer trailed far behind this general awareness of the controversy,” the Gallup officers wrote of their convention paper.
Gallup factors to its different surveys throughout the identical interval that discovered when individuals stated smoking was “harmful,” they have been considering of much less critical dangers, like coughing, not most cancers.
Reached for remark in regards to the continued reliance on the 1954 ballot, Gallup basic counsel Steve O’Brien — who wrote the paper from 1998 — declined to wade again into the controversy.
“The fraternity that litigates these smoking cases are all aware of the history — or if they were doing their job right, they are,” O’Brien wrote in an e-mail.
For his half, Vanderbilt’s Geer stated in a 2014 deposition that he had by no means seen the letter to Ford or the Gallup warning, although each are publicly out there as a part of the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents. That’s an archival database, well-known to public well being researchers, of inside tobacco firm paperwork maintained by the University of California-San Francisco.
Geer had by no means used it.
“I know of it broadly, but I’ve never spent any time on [the database],” Geer stated.
Occasionally, the professors who work with the tobacco business’s legal professionals shall be rejected as specialists. In one case from late 2011, Geer was barred from testifying over questions on his methodology.
‘A Denial Of History’
Geer’s videotaped deposition in 2014 was a part of Woodruff v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, et al., and he additionally submitted a report summarizing his analysis and findings. The plaintiff in that go well with, a Florida widow, argued that her husband’s bladder most cancers was brought on by his smoking since he was a child — as a lot as three packs a day. The case was in the end settled for an undisclosed quantity as half of a bigger settlement.
The go well with was one in every of hundreds in Florida stemming from a former class-action verdict that was overturned however allowed many people who smoke to make particular person claims utilizing the identical jury findings.
Tobacco corporations win some and lose some. But the “common knowledge” protection has confirmed efficient at limiting their liabilities, says Stanford’s Proctor. It’s tough for a decide or jurors to forged their minds again to the 1950s, suspending all they know now in regards to the risks of smoking, due to 65 years of gathered science.
But Proctor maintains that the 1950s have been “another world.”
Proctor factors out that almost all medical doctors was people who smoke. Some cigarettes have been even branded as “doctor recommended.” Proctor calls it “a denial of history” to gloss over how broadly smoking was accepted, and the way actively tobacco corporations contributed to the confusion.
Proctor, together with Middle Tennessee State University historian Louis Kyriakoudes, is amongst a small variety of professors who work on behalf of dying people who smoke or their surviving spouses.
Both have printed extensively on smoking and record on their CVs work as an professional witness in opposition to tobacco corporations.
“I’m proud of what I do,” Kyriakoudes stated.
Tobacco corporations deserve the possibility to defend themselves, he says. But he accuses the professors they rent of donning “intellectual blinders” with a purpose to declare everybody knew that sooner or later smoking would kill them.
“People tell themselves that it’s the smoker’s fault for smoking, and why should somebody be suing a tobacco company anyway?” he stated. “That plays into a very strong bias that blames the victim of addiction.”
Reputational Harm
Plaintiff attorneys will typically query the business’s protection specialists about what they’ve disclosed to their educational employer in regards to the exterior work. And it’s clear from their solutions that the teachers don’t broadly promote their work, even when they confide in their employer that they seek the advice of with regulation corporations, which write the precise checks.
But Allan Brandt, a medical historian and former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, says establishments of upper schooling must be involved about this obscure disclosure — for the reason that professor’s school appointment is usually the credential used to qualify them as an professional in a lawsuit.
“I think it can harm the reputation of our own scholarship and our universities when this isn’t really put out in the open,” he stated.
Many professors are known as to be professional witnesses, in a number of varieties of instances. But Brandt says he hasn’t discovered any protection specialists in these tobacco instances who would even be keen to defend their claims (in regards to the consciousness of smoking’s risks) in an educational setting.
He says students can’t have it a method on campus and one other in courtroom.
“This is the ultimate public forum,” Brandt stated. “The ideas that are presented there really ought to be subject to the kind of scrutiny and peer scrutiny that is so characteristic and a desirable value of universities.”
This story is a part of a partnership that features Nashville Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
