Andrew Higgins Chairs Expert Group for the World Health Organisation on Liability
Andrew Higgins, Professor of Civil Procedure, recently chaired the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Expert Group on Article 19 of the WHO – Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Article 19 addresses “Liability” and that, “for the purpose of tobacco control,” requires Parties to consider strengthening their legal frameworks through legislation, or promoting their existing laws, to deal with criminal and civil liability including compensation where appropriate; to cooperate with each-other to provide information relevant to civil and criminal liability and to provide one another assistance in civil and criminal legal proceedings. The 10th Conference of the Parties established an Expert Group to examine practices that had evolved at Party level, taking into account developments in relevant international fora, to support Parties implement 19; to provide options for detecting and counteracting tobacco industry strategies aimed at evading liability and undermining tobacco control, and to explore the development of a methodology that quantifies the health care costs borne due to tobacco use that could be used in tobacco-related litigation.
Health care cost recovery litigation is currently ongoing in Brazil and Korea and has recently been settled in Canada with the industry agreeing to pay $32.5 billion CAD to healthcare providers, some victims of lung and throat cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and the establishment of a Cy Pres foundation to conduct research into treatment of smoking related diseases.
Andrew chaired the expert group which will report back to the 11th Conference of the Parties in Geneva later this year. The Report builds on earlier work that Andrew has done in this area including the creation of an online toolkit to assist policy makers, including non-lawyers, understand what types of legal reforms may be needed to a Party’s laws, and what kind of liability actions might be possible, as part of their implementation of Article 19. The toolkit is now available in all official languages of the WHO.
