[Intl-tobacco] Polish court dismisses its first anti-tobacco case (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Polish court dismisses its first anti-tobacco case
Source: Reuters, Tuesday, 7/25/00

WARSAW, July 25 (Reuters) =97 A court in Poland's southern city of Krakow o=
n
Tuesday dismissed the country's first anti-tobacco case against Philip
Morris (MO.N) and a local firm controlled by France's (SEIT.PA) Seita,
court officials said.

The plaintiff, Slawomir Lubicz-Sienicki, sued the U.S. firm, which invests
heavily in Poland, and the local cigarette maker for 10 million zlotys
($2.32 million) in punitive damages after his mother, who smoked for many
years, died of lung cancer.

But the court said the man, who represented himself during the case,
failed to show the cigarette makers' fault behind his mother's death,
local PAP news agency said.

PAP said the court ordered Lubicz-Sienicki to pay trial costs of 6,000
zlotys to each of the two sued companies.

Lubicz-Sienicki said that the trial served its purpose of raising public
awareness about damaging effects of smoking. He said he planned to appeal
the verdict.

"I think this case has already fulfilled its goal even though there are
years of court proceedings still ahead of me,'' Lubicz-Sienicki was quoted
as saying by PAP.

Philip Morris and other tobacco companies face multiple individual and
class-action suits in the United States for the damage to health from
smoking.

Earlier in July, a jury in Florida ordered America's big cigarette makers
to pay a stunning $145 billion in punitive damages for injuring hundreds
of thousands of the state's smokers.

But the vast majority of verdicts over the past 50 years in the United
States still have been in favour of tobacco firms.

Philip Morris and other Western cigarette makers have been attracted to
Poland and eastern Europe after the fall of communism in 1989 to profit
from higher demand for tobacco products among populations in the former
Soviet bloc.

Poland's tobacco consumption has eased in 1998 to some 2,400 cigarettes
per capita annually, or nearly seven cigarettes a day per each of 38
million Poles, according to the latest statistical data.

($1-4.304 Zloty)