The High Court has dismissed a legal challenge against standardised packaging rules brought by four of the biggest tobacco companies.
In a lengthy judgment, Mr Justice Green rejected the arguments of Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International, in R(oao BAT & Ors) v Secretary of State for Health [2016] EWHC 1169 (Admin). The tobacco companies challenged the lawfulness of the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/829), which require cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco to be sold in brown packages with prominent health warnings. They claimed the regulations breached international, European and domestic law, and infringed their human rights and intellectual property rights. They were represented by a stellar team of Global Elite and leading City firms—Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Herbert Smith Freehills; and Ashurst.
Following Green J’s decision, the rules were introduced on 20 May.
Green J said: “As a generality, the claimants’ evidence is largely: not peer reviewed; frequently not tendered with a statement of truth or declaration that complies with the CPR [Civil Procedure Rules]; almost universally prepared without any reference to the internal documentation or data of the tobacco companies themselves; either ignores or airily dismisses the worldwide research and literature base which contradicts evidence tendered by the tobacco industry; and, is frequently unverifiable...Some of it was wholly untenable and resembled diatribe rather than expert opinion.”
He rejected the companies’ claim that the restrictions were disproportionate, pointing out that savings to the public purse would outweigh monetary losses to the tobacco industry. He continued: “Yet it is wrong to view this issue purely in monetised terms alone; there is a significant moral angle which is embedded in the Regulations which is about saving children from a lifetime of addiction, and children and adults from premature death and related suffering and disease.”
Green J also rejected the companies’ claims for compensation for the restrictions. “There is no precedent where the law has provided compensation for the suppression of a property right which facilitates and furthers, quite deliberately, a health epidemic. And moreover, a health epidemic which imposes vast negative health and other costs upon the very state that is then being expected to compensate the property right holder for ceasing to facilitate the epidemic.”
