Litigation against the tobacco industry

Litigation against the tobacco industry is acknowledged as a tobacco control strategy largely because of the history of tobacco industry misconduct.

The promise of litigation is that it can expose the tobacco industry's conduct, have the lawfulness of the conduct examined by independent courts of law, require the tobacco industry to pay compensation for the harm its conduct has caused, and change the way in which it behaves into the future.

Tobacco litigation in the US

Litigation in the US has led to the release of millions of previously secret internal industry documents, demonstrating the tobacco industry's history of denial and deceit. In a landmark case, Judge Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that the major US tobacco companies had breached anti-racketeering law.

Tobacco litigation in Australia

The best-known Australian tobacco case is the McCabe case, which generated international attention for exposing British American Tobacco's so-called "document retention policy", under which the company destroyed thousands of documents that would have been relevant in court proceedings.