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Canadian Tobacco Suit Goes Up In Smoke.
A Canadian court has thrown out a class action
lawsuit that was launched nine years ago against three tobacco companies,
saying the process would require a thousand years of litigation to
resolve.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled the multimillion dollar suit
against Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans Inc, Rothmans Benson &
Hedges and JTI-Macdonald Corp did not meet the requirements for class
action.
Four smokers originally launched the lawsuit against the tobacco
companies, with one of the plaintiffs having died in the interim. They
were requesting $1 million (US$748,000) each in damages. If it had been
allowed to proceed, the class action would have included everyone who had
ever smoked in the province of Ontario.
"Even if the defendants were to only contest a portion of the individual
claims, and each dispute could be concluded in one day, simple mathematics
indicate that such a process would require the equivalent of 1,000 years
of litigation, if it were to be conducted sequentially," said Justice
Warren Winkler in his 22-page written decision.
The lawsuit would have been the largest in Canadian history.
Source: Reuters, "Canada Court Tosses Out Tobacco Suit,"
February 5, 2004.
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