Abstract
In this part of the book I present my research on the involvement of historians as expert judicial witnesses in tobacco litigation in the American legal system. I have made a quantitative and qualitative analysis which has allowed me to give a broad overview of those historians involved. With historians testifying for the tobacco industry remaining silent about their involvement while making hundreds of thousands of dollars through delivering doubtful historical research on the actions committed by the tobacco companies which Judge Kessler described as over the course of more than 50 years, Defendants lied, misrepresented, and deceived the American public; forensic history in tobacco litigation remains a controversial practice.
… over the course of more than 50 years, Defendants
lied, misrepresented, and deceived the American
public, including smokers and the young people they
avidly sought as “replacement smokers,”
about the devastating health effects of smoking and
environmental tobacco smoke …
Judge Gladys Kessler (2006)
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Notes
- 1.
See Appendix III, cfr. infra.
- 2.
See Appendix I for all 50 expert witness profiles and Appendix II for a schematic overview, cfr. infra.
- 3.
See all the expert witness profiles online at http://www.thejudgeandthehistorian.ugent.be. Accessed 31 Oct 2014. Disclosure website created and maintained by the author.
- 4.
Robert Proctor, expert for the plaintiffs, has made his expert report from US v. Philip Morris et al. available: http://jpsl.org/archives/tobacco-and-health-expert-witness-report-filed-behalf-plaintiffs-united-states-america-plaintiff-v-philip-morris-inc-et-al-defen. Accessed 31 Oct 2014, as well as his expert report for the plaintiffs in Ironworkers v. Philip Morris: see http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vmm56c00. Accessed 31 Oct 2014.
- 5.
See the expert witness profiles in Appendix I, cfr. infra.
- 6.
Concept by legal scholar David Caudill, sociotechnical arguments are a combination of technical and extralegal rhetorical strategies. See Caudill, David. 2005. Sociotechnical Arguments in Scientific Discourse: Expert Depositions in Tobacco Litigation. The Review of Litigation 24, 1–2.
- 7.
For a discussion on these databases, see Part III, Sect. 13.4.3. Game III: The Third Wave of Tobacco Litigation, cfr. infra.
- 8.
See Appendix I, cfr. infra.
- 9.
See Appendix II, cfr. infra.
- 10.
See Appendix III, cfr. infra.
- 11.
For the Standard Expert Witness Profile with extra explanation see Expert Witness Profile No. 0.
- 12.
See Expert Witness Profile No. 13, John Drobny.
- 13.
To consult to DATTA go to http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/search/basic. Accessed 31 Oct 2014. This is the search engine of The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, which comprises all the online available internal documents of the tobacco industry and the judicial documents of tobacco litigation. I have furthermore made use for compiling these profiles from different internet databases, namely the TDO, DATTA, LTDL, and also the lists on expert witnessing compiled by Childs, Kyriakoudes, and Proctor, and also the CVN Law School database of court videos. See for more information on my quantitative research and its results: Part III, Chap. 17: Final Conclusion on the Involvement of Historians in Tobacco Litigation, cfr. infra.
- 14.
Most profiles offer Westlaw references to trial records from tobacco litigation.
- 15.
I discuss the debate on the involvement of historians in tobacco litigation in Part III, Chap. 15: Debates: Reflections in Academic and National Media. I have reviewed articles from academic journals as well as from newspapers such as The New York Times.
- 16.
I have made the argument that historians should testify in court and act not only as fact-finders, in contrast with what Alain Wijffels has proposed: namely to limit the involvement of the historian to the fact-finding process before the trial. See: Part II, Chap. 8: A Reassessment of Wijffels’ Concept of Forensic History, cfr. supra. The opportunity to review the litigation-driven work by historians in tobacco litigation is solely possible because of these publically accessible trial records.
- 17.
See Appendices II and III, cfr. infra.
- 18.
De Baets, Antoon. 2009. Responsible History. New York: Berghahn Books.
Bibliography
Caudill, David. 2005. Sociotechnical arguments in scientific discourse: Expert depositions in tobacco litigation. The Review of Litigation 24: 1–56.
De Baets, Antoon. 2009. Responsible history. New York: Berghahn Books.
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Delafontaine, R. (2015). Introduction Part III. In: Historians as Expert Judicial Witnesses in Tobacco Litigation. Studies in the History of Law and Justice, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14292-0_9
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