[Intl-tobacco] Spaniards To Sue Tobacco Giants (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Spaniards To Sue Tobacco Giants
by Daniel Woolls / Associated Press Writer
Source: AP, Friday, 12/29/00

MADRID, Spain –– Spaniards who lost their voices to throat cancer after
years of smoking plan a series of class-action lawsuits against tobacco
companies, including the Spanish affiliates of U.S. giants R.J. Reynolds
and Philip Morris, attorneys and activists said Friday.

Starting Wednesday, associations representing 4,300 cancer patients will
file separate suits in 14 Spanish cities in a bid to win damages totaling
about $22 million.

That's a minuscule fraction of the $145 billion that Florida smokers were
awarded in July in a landmark ruling against major U.S. cigarette makers,
including R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.

The Spaniards want compensation for a very specific purpose: To fund
rehabilitation centers where cancer victims whose larynxes were removed
can receive psychological counseling and learn to speak again.

"We are not interested in money. What we want are services," said Jose
Angel Manoso, a lawyer for 650 plaintiffs in Barcelona.

His clients are seeking a lump-sum payment of $2.8 million to leave the
tiny rehab center they rent in Spain's second largest city and buy a more
spacious place of their own, $165,000 a year to run it.

Manoso said he and attorneys for a similar association in the northern
city of Leon will file suit Wednesday.

The other 12 groups will do so by the end of January, once the government
formally grants them status as nonprofit groups, which means if they lose
their suits they don't have to pay court costs. That's important because
these suits will probably take years to decide, Manoso said.

The defendants will be the same each time: The Spanish branches of
Reynolds, Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, plus the
Franco-Spanish tobacco company Altadis, Cita Tobacos de Canarias and
another Spanish firm called Logista.

Gumersindo Rodriguez, president of the Leon association, said groups like
his are essential because Spaniards who undergo laryngectomies – surgical
removal of the larynx or voice box – get absolutely no postoperative aid
from the government.

"The state health care system carries out the operation, then leaves you
there to rot," he said.

They must learn a new way of breathing, through a hole in the neck called
a stoma, which also allows speech techniques that don't involve the vocal
chords.