We closely monitor tobacco litigation and post on selective developments here.  Secondhand smoke litigation information is compiled here.

PHAI has created an FDA Tobacco Litigation Tracker to follow legal challenges to FDA’s authority to regulate tobacco products.

Our History with Tobacco Litigation

PHAI’s president and Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Law, Richard Daynard, developed the Tobacco Products Liability Project (TPLP) back in 1984 to use tobacco litigation as a public health and cancer control strategy.  In 1988, Dr. Daynard published the first scholarly article exploring this theory in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute: Tobacco Liability Litigation as a Cancer Control Strategy (PDF taken from the files of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co).

In 1988, Professor Daynard squared off with John Strough, senior litigation partner with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue who headed up RJ Reynolds’ litigation defense on Nightline.  It was to the first and last time that the industry put its lawyers on such a program (see video below).

TPLP has held over 20 national or international conferences on tobacco litigation.

Much of our material resides, for now, on the inactive TPLP website (which can be searched here). This includes the so-called Boeken Trial-in-a-Box, various analyses and resources from United States v. Philip Morris,  and the trial exhibits from State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip Morris, Inc., et al..  In addition, TPLP operated the State Tobacco Information Center website in the mid to late 1990s to help make available information from the state lawsuits against the tobacco industry.  The site remains but our collection has been integrated into the Truth Initiative Tobacco Documents Library at the University of California San Francisco.  We are charter members of the Tobacco Trial Lawyers’ Association.