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Tobacco Litigation |
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| Waltman & Grisham has dedicated significant resources and years of work toward the investigation and pursuit of the tobacco industries refusal to market cigarettes with design characteristics lessening the likelihood of accidental fires. Through persistence and dedication to the idea that a safer smoking product can be constructed, Waltman & Grisham has played a part in maintaining the issue in the National and International forefront. In January of 2000, a major tobacco company against whom Waltman & Grisam has maintained litigation since 1995 announced that it would begin marketing a cigarette that incorporates design characteristics that lessen the chance of a fire in the case of carelessly handled cigarettes. | |||
| Fire Safe Cigarettes |
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From CBS's 60 Minutes investigative segment which aired March 27, 1994... Every year 1,000 Americans die in fires ignited by cigarettes, over a hundred of those victims are children. Cigarette fires cost billions of dollars a year in property damage. Can the tragedy of cigarette fires be prevented? The tobacco companies consistently say they don't know how to make a fire-safe cigarette that anyone would buy. The fact is that for years Philip Morris one of the world's largest cigarette manufacturers has conducted testing of both commercial and prototype cigarettes to determine their ignition propensity. Philip Morris launched its own super-secret project dubbed "Project Hamlet" by company personnel. Its goal: to develop a fire safe cigarette that would be acceptable to smokers. In March of 1994, 60 Minutes aired their own investigative segment "Up
In Smoke" which quoted numerous, secret internal Philip Morris documents
that described the Project Hamlet efforts. According to the documents,
Project Hamlet's goals were reached in 1987 when they sent out a fire safe
Hamlet cigarette to a panel of 77 smokers who rated the prototype "equally
acceptable to the smokers in the test and showed no significant differences,"
between the fire-safe cigarette and a Marlboro. vs. Philip Morris, et al  View
Plaintiff's Original Petition
Filed in Civil Action No. 262-94 in the District Court of Johnson County, Texas, 18th Judicial District, this case involves a three year old girl who was burned over 80% of her body when the vehicle she was riding in was ignited by a carelessly handled cigarette. Plaintiffs have alleged that Philip Morris, the cigarette manufacturer had the technical knowledge for years to produce a fire-safe cigarette, a cigarette that would not ignite upholstery or other flammable textiles if carelessly discarded. The safer alternative design would, in reasonable probability, have prevented or significantly reduced the risk of Shannon's injuries, without substantially impairing the product's utility. When weighed against the untold human suffering which could have been prevented by use of the safer alternative design, there can be little doubt that the fire-safe cigarette was economically feasible. Plaintiff Shannon Moore is living proof of that fact. The design defects set forth above and Defendant Philip Morris' refusal to incorporate the safer alternative design, were the producing cause of Plaintiff Shannon Moore's injuries and damages. Depositions of numerous, key Philip Morris researchers directly involved in Project Hamlet have been conducted in this case. Although the transcripts were originally designated as confidential under the protective order entered in this case, the confidential designation has been withdrawn by attorneys for Philip Morris.
Case Facts: Fort Worth Fire Department Arson Investigator
Previously Unreleased Deposition Transcripts of Philip Morris Researchers
Philip Morris Internal Documents Waltman & Grisham has obtained well over 100,000 pages of internal documents from the Philip Morris Company pursuant to a Stipulated Protective Order in Stacks, et al v. Philip Morris Companies, Inc., et al filed in Civil Action No. 262-94 in the District Court of Johnson County, Texas, 18th Judicial District. Pursuant to the protective order, our firm is allowed to share these documents designated as "confidential" with "legal counsel of any other plaintiff who, at the time of such disclosure, has a suit filed and served against Philip Morris alleging injury or property damage resulting from a fire allegedly caused by a cigarette manufactured by Philip Morris". All 100,000 plus pages of Philip Morris internal documents have been processed and indexed by QuickSearch and are word-searchable. QuickSearch - Word Search Discovery Documents Experience in complex litigation has proven that manually searching and indexing large quantities of documents is inefficient, as well as impractical and often results in overlooking vital information. To solve these issues we have designed and written our own proprietary software to revolutionize document research. QuickSearch is a computer based document archiving system consisting of software to scan the documents, perform optical character recognition and build a word searchable database keyed to the document images. This allows the researcher to search for a particular name, word or phrase and then view an image of every document that contains that word or phrase. The document may then be annotated, marked and indexed for future retrieval. Document imaging means eliminating warehouses of paper copies, reducing
these to one or more compact disks (CD's). Each CD can store about 25,000
printed pages. In addition to offering an environmentally friendly system
for document storage the search and retrieval system is technically superior
to any technology currently available.
State Tobacco Information Center ASH - Action on Smoking and Health Tobacco Control Resource Center Jack Cannon's Tobacco Industry Information Resources Tobacco Control Archives - The Brown & Williamson Collection |
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