Tobacco Comment Helps Insurers.(Brief Article)

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, October, 1999 by LONKEVICH, DAN

A 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 tar more...

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