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Court Orders Stanford Expert to Surrender Manuscript ($$) 

A Stanford University professor is fighting to keep his unpublished book manuscript out of the hands of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, which subpoenaed it after he testified as an expert witness for smokers who are suing the company. Last month, Stanford asked the court to reject the company's demand, saying that it could have a "chilling effect" on researchers serving as expert witnesses.

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Tobacco Company Seeks Access To Historian's Unpublished Manuscript 

The Chronicle discusses attempts by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to obtain access to an unpublished work by Stanford's Robert Proctor. Dr. Proctor is an expert witness in a lawsuit against the company; R. J. Reynolds thinks material in the manuscript will be helpful in its cross-examination of the historian of science. Dr. Proctor is fighting the tobacco company's subpoena. Dr. Proctor coined the term "agnotology," a term meaning the cultural production of ignorance.

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Big Tobacco Strikes Back at Historian in Court ($$) 

A Stanford University professor who has sought to expose ties between historians and the tobacco industry is being accused in court of having broken the law in challenging the employment of four graduate students at the University of Florida as researchers assisting tobacco companies in litigation.

In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month, tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal witness

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Scholars' Right to Keep Unpublished Work Private Is at Issue in Lawsuit ($$) 

In a case with potentially major implications for scholars and publishers, a Stanford University professor who often serves as an expert witness against tobacco companies is fighting an effort by lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to obtain the manuscript of his unpublished and unfinished book on that industry.

A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history

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Koballa v. Philip Morris, et al  

The case of Stella Koballa, et al., etc. v. Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., et al., etc. is a civil lawsuit filed against Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and several other large tobacco firms in 2007. The case was filed on behalf of Stella Koballa, a lung cancer survivor who also suffers from emphysema. As with many other court cases against the tobacco companeis, Koballa alleges that cigarette makers concealed information about the hazards of smoking during the 1950s and 1960s, causing individuals to smoke without regard to health risks, including cancer.

The case became controversial because during the case, lawyers for R.J. Reynolds subpoenaed an unfinished manuscript about the history of the global tobacco industry written by Stanford history professor Robert Neal Proctor, who was tapped to serve as an expert witness for the plaintiff in the case. Proctor and lawyers for the plaintiff lawyers are contesting the subpoena, saying the attempt to reveal the unfinished manuscript is an effort to harass and intimidate Dr. Proctor, and ruin his credibility. They maintain that if the defense obtains the manuscript, it would have a chilling effect on other experts who may be asked to testify against the industry.[1]

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Stanford Historian Robert Proctor vs. R.J. Reynolds: A Lot on the Line 

History is unkind to tobacco companies, and never more so than since a federal court in 2006 found the industry guilty of perpetrating 50 years of fraud and deceit upon the American people. It's a sordid history to live down, and maybe that's why R.J. Reynolds is harassing one of the few historians who has been willing to step up and testify in court about the real history of the tobacco industry's behavior: Professor Robert N. Proctor of Stanford University.

Dr. Proctor specializes in the history of 20th- and 21st-century scientific controversies, including the history of tobacco and "agnotology,", the study of the cultural production of ignorance and doubt -- a field familiar to tobacco companies. After all, Brown & Williamson wrote in a 1969 proposal that

Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public ... If we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, then there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health. . . .

Tobacco companies hate Dr. Proctor because he helps draw a clear picture for juries about how the industry reacted when the hazards of smoking were revealed in the 1950s an onward. He has also evaluated how the history of smoking in the U.S. might have been different had the industry had responded honestly to evidence that its products cause disease. Dr. Proctor has even taken other medical historians to task for testifying in the industry's favor in lawsuits.

Big Tobacco has employed historians in the courtroom to help demonstrate how "everyone knew" about the dangers of smoking at any given point in time. More than 40 historians have testified for the industry, but only three have testified against. Dr. Proctor is one of those brave three. He has testified in 15 tobacco lawsuits since 1998, and now, in the latest suit, Koballa v. Philip Morris, et al, R.J. Reynolds is trying to stop him. . . .

Proctor's battle to protect his manuscript has broad implications for privacy, protection of academic work, and future court cases in which scholars, researchers and other experts are tapped to testify. As Dr. Proctor has pointed out, it is already difficult to find historians who are willing to testify against the industry. Now we can see why. It obviously takes courage to do so, and can lead to significant extra expense. That Dr. Proctor has had to spend so much of his own money to participate in this case is egregious.

This intimidation of Dr. Proctor, if the court allows it to continue, will only make the tobacco industry's path to win cases easier, and punish those who step up in court to tell the truth about this industry's past.

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• Prof. fights tobacco subpoena, defends research freedom 

Students who have taken the IHUM course “World History of Science” in the last two years probably know history Prof. Robert Proctor for his crusade against the tobacco industry. Bespectacled and typically relaxed, he was often found in front of hundreds of freshmen presenting incriminating evidence against the business.

The professor has also appeared as a witness in 15 lawsuits against tobacco companies since 1998 and most recently agreed to appear in court on behalf of the plaintiffs in Stella Koballa, et al., etc. v. Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., et al., etc., a civil lawsuit filed in 2007 against Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and several other large tobacco firms.

But in this latest bout with Big Tobacco, Proctor is facing stiff opposition.

While the suit awaits trial in the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, lawyers for R.J. Reynolds are attempting to obtain a manuscript of the professor's still-unpublished book on the tobacco industry and already had a subpoena for the work approved in late August. The defense wanted to use this manuscript for the cross-examination of Proctor when he takes the stand for the plaintiffs.

For Proctor, R.J. Reynolds' attempt to obtain his unpublished book, entitled Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco, is an attack on his private work and credibility before he can even take the witness stand.

“The tobacco industry is trying to win its cases by intimidating witnesses and harassing me,” . . .

While the subpoena has been approved, Proctor and the plaintiffs have yet to submit to the court's order. Instead, more than a week after the subpoena was issued, the plaintiffs filed a motion in the hopes the court would reconsider the decision. . . .

In the 27-page motion, the plaintiffs argued that the court's decision to obtain Proctor's work violated his rights to independently publish the book, to keep individual privacy and to gather information under the First Amendment. As such, the motion also asked that the work be placed under a protective order, preventing access to the manuscript for use as evidence in a court of law.

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