Limitations regarding the use of quotes
The quotes provided here reflect statements from a specific decision. Accordingly, the International Legal Consortium (ILC) cannot guarantee that an appellate court has not reversed a lower court decision which may influence the applicability or influence of a given quote. All quotes have been selected based on the subjective evaluations undertaken by the ILC meaning that quotes provided here may not accurately or comprehensively represent a given court’s opinion or conclusion, as such quotes may have originally appeared alongside other negative opinions or accompanying facts. Further, some quotes are derived from unofficial English translations, which may alter their original meaning. We emphasize the need to review the original decision and related decisions before authoritatively relying on quotes. Using quotes provided here should not be construed as legal advice and is not intended to be a substitute for legal counsel on any subject matter in any jurisdiction. Please see the full limitations at https://www.tobaccocontrollaws.org/about.
The plaintiff, on behalf of a deceased person who smoked for 40 years, brought claims against the tobacco industry for personal injury and product liability. During discovery, the plaintiff requested documents produced by the research institute established by the tobacco industry in order to develop evidence to protect the industry from future litigation regarding the health dangers of smoking. The industry tried to keep many of the research institute’s documents out of the litigation by claiming the documents were subject to attorney-client privilege. A review by a special magistrate agreed that the documents should be privileged. The judge presiding over the case then reversed the magistrate’s decision and ordered the documents to be produced with an opinion damaging to the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, through an extraordinary procedure, to reverse the lower court’s holding that the "crime fraud" exception applied to documents they claimed were privileged, thus requiring those documents to be available in the litigation. In this opinion the appellate court reverses the lower court’s requirement to produce the documents and grants the industry’s request to appoint a new judge for the case because of the appearance of bias on the basis of the trial court judge’s opinion.