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ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 2013 H Street, NW / Washington, DC 20006 / (202) 659-4310 |
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review or disturb a ruling by a lower court which required the major tobacco companies and their allies to turn over computerized databases on millions of internal documents to the state of Minnesota.
The companies argued that they had spent tens of millions of dollars to create the databases.
They said that forcing them to turn the databases over to entities suing them to recover medical costs related to smoking would violate their constitutional guarantee of due process. They also argued that the databases were protected as attorney "work product."
The lower court rejected both arguments, and the Supreme Court has now let that decision stand.
The decision may encourage other courts to likewise reject arguments that secret documents are protected by the attorney work product privilege.
| ASH -
ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 2013 H Street, NW / Washington, DC 20006 / (202) 659-4310 |