EFFORT TO SUE CIGARETTE FIRMS FAILS IN BRITAIN

LONDON - The most ambitious attempt to sue tobacco companies outside
the United States collapsed on Friday after a High Court judge
dismissed suits brought by 46 cancer sufferers against Britain's two
leading cigarette makers.

The ruling greatly diminished the prospect of successful litigation in
Britain and demonstrated the legal and cultural differences that have
prevented anti-tobacco forces from adopting American-style court
tactics, according to legal experts and industry executives.

The dismissal of the suits "sends a signal to others contemplating
similar action about their prospects of success, " said Gareth Davis,
chief executive of Imperial Tobacco Group PLC, one of the two
defendants in the case.

"This is a great disappointment," said Bill O'Neill, head of tobacco
policy at the British Medical Association, which represents most of
the country's doctors.

He said Britain had lost its best chance to "force representatives of
industry into the witness box to get at the truth of what has gone on
in this country. " Judge Michael Wright dismissed the suits after the
plaintiffs and their lawyers decided to abandon their action following
a damaging pre-trial ruling earlier this month.

In that ruling, Judge Wright rejected eight test cases because the
plaintiffs filed their suits more than three years after being
diagnosed with cancer, exceeding the statute of limitations under
British law.

The judge also appeared to question the plaintiff's underlying
argument that the companies were negligent for failing to reduce the
tar content of cigarettes in the 1950s and 1960s, calling it
"speculative." Unlike recent successful suits in the United States,
the plaintiffs did not rely on the argument that smoking was addictive.

"There was just no point in continuing," said Martyn Day of the law
firm Leigh, Day & Co., who initiated the case. The judge "made it
clear he didn't like the case as a whole," he said.

In return for dropping the case, Imperial & Gallaher Group PLC, the
other defendant, agreed not to pursue the plaintiffs and their lawyers
for legal costs, which Imperial alone put at UKP 7 million ($11.2
million). The plaintiffs' lawyers also agreed not to take new action
against the two companies for 10 years, or against any other tobacco
company for five years.

The withdrawal still leaves seven plaintiffs in the case, but with no
lawyers to represent them and the possibility of being bankrupted by
legal costs, they were expected to abandon their cases by an April 16
deadline. "The chance of other lawyers' being prepared to take this
through is nil," Mr. Day said.

"It demonstrates the extent to which the U.S. is different," said
Michael Prideaux, a spokesman for British American Tobacco PLC, which
was not involved in the case but has participated in a $300 billion
national settlement in the United States. "No other country has
adopted the UWS. Iegal system in its full glory."