Henry Waxman: “the negotiations that are going on at the present time with the tobacco industry, they are requesting that they be…”

“the negotiations that are going on at the present time with the tobacco industry, they are requesting that they be excused from punitive damages. I want to point out to my colleagues that the tobacco industry for 4 decades has misled and deceived the American people about their product. They have lied to the Congress, and they have kept documents secret. Last week we revealed documents that had not been public before from the Liggett Tobacco Co. where they had an attorney-client privilege to try to keep these documents from the public where they knew about a safer cigarette but did not want to make a safer cigarette because their lawyers said that would mean that the cigarette they were already making was unsafe and they would be presumably admitting that. They refused to turn over to medical people information about the harm from cigarettes because they were fearful of the liability that might attach to them. Now those documents are simply the tip of the iceberg. There are over 150,000 documents that have claimed to be attorney client privilege. The attorney client privilege will not shield documents if there is fraud or criminal conduct involved, and I believe that if these documents become public, they may well lead to criminal charges being brought. One of the reasons the tobacco industry is so anxious for a settlement is that one of the terms of their settlement is that these documents would be kept secret forever.”