Corporate Accountability?

HAVE THE AMBULANCE chasers gone too far this time? Cigarette companies think so, as they have been forced to defend themselves against a barrage of liability suits from long-time smokers who have developed lung cancer.

At first glance, these suits seem like classic instances of litigious greed. No one forced these people to smoke cigarettes; why should cigarette companies be made to foot the bill for their customer's over-indulgence?

But the issue is not so simple, and the case that will be brought this week in Santa Barbara by personal injury lawyer Melvin Belli shows why. His argument rests on the notion that companies which manufacture a product ought to inform their customers of the dangers of using that product. The question is not whether smokers are responsible for their choice to smoke cigarettes. Of course they are; they're dying prematurely as a consequence of that choice. The issue is whether corporations are responsible for honestly advertising and labeling the products they manufacture.

By arguing that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the defendant in this case, knew that cigarette smoking was addictive long before this fact was made public by the U.S. Surgeon General, Belli is not attempting to mitigate somehow his client's responsibility for choosing to smoke cigarettes. Rather he hopes to establish that the company was negligent and withheld crucial information about its product. Automobile companies that manufacture dangerous cars and do not tell their customers about potential safety hazards are held liable for resulting accidents and injuries; why not cigarette companies?

Imagine a similar case in which the Diet Candy Company begins marketing a new, super-sweet, sugar-free candy bar that has only one calorie per bar. Two years later the company discovers that the candy bar causes nose cancer in Caucasian men. If Diet announces its discovery, it will lose almost half of its market; so the company conceals this information about its product. Caucasian men are freely choosing to eat Diet candy bars, but they are not freely choosing to eat a nasal carcinogen.

Reynold's defense lawyer hit the nail on the head when he said that the issue is "personal accountability for one's actions." The 14th Amendment defines corporations as legal persons, persons who are responsible for what they do. If cigarette companies were, in fact, deceptive or dishonest in marketing their products, then they ought to be held liable for the consequences of smoking cigarettes which they concealed from the public.

THERE IS NO doubt that cigarette smoking has become a lot less popular since it has been recognized as a serious health hazard. Tobacco companies made a lot of money when people thought it was perfectly safe to smoke a pack or two a day. But prior to the Surgeon General's report cigarette smokers did not choose to begin using an addictive and deadly drug; they chose to use a product that was advertised as being entirely harmless. If tobacco companies made an honest mistake about the health effects of cigarettes, no one can blame them. But if they knew some of the potential hazards of cigarette smoking--and addiction is certainly one of them--without informing the public, who can defend them?

It is only recently that cigarette has smoking been widely perceived as dangerous and unhealthy. People who begin smoking today are aware of the potentially devastating consequences of their choice, but someone who began smoking 20 or 30 years ago did so thinking that he could quit any time and that even if he didn't quit his health wouldn't suffer.

It is simply a mistake to see liability suits against cigarette manufacturers as attempts to avoid personal responsibility for one's actions. Responsibility is what they are all about: corporate responsibility. Companies who profit by deceiving their customers and causing them personal injury ought to be dealt with sternly. If the courts find that cigarette companies withheld crucial information from their customers, then hang' em high.