Tobacco Comment Helps Insurers
Monday, October 18th, 1999 LiabilityA tobacco giant’s disclosure last week on its Internet Web site that cigarette smoking causes cancer and that smoking is addictive lends even more credence to insurers to fight liability if a claim is ever filed, according to an insurance attorney. “It certainly makes the fraud against insurers [clearer] and expected-and-intended defenses much easier than they would have been,” said Mitchell Lathrop, an insurance attorney in the San Diego office of Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps. Mr. Lathrop’s comments came after Philip Morris USA announced on its Internet Web site that: “There is an overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers [are].
