MS 10.30-12.00 Main sessions
The former have at least a moral obligation to inform consumers in the most efficient way.
Manufacturers stand in a very different position: they sell a product which is highly dangerous. In order to allow consumers to make a rational choice, they have a legal obligation to convey the optimal amount of information about the risk involved. Adequate warnings are the first step to fulfill this obligation, otherwise producers will incorporate extra-profits to the detriment of consumers and their health\wealth.
Products liability is the most suitable legal route by which harmed consumers, or governments on their behalf, can recover for the negligent behaviour ('failure to warn') of domestic and foreign manufacturers.
Courts should concentrate less on the cognitive level of each single consumer in her own smoker-history, and rather look to the introduction of warning labels at different times worldwide. Given the early introduction of warning labels in 1965, the US should be taken as a model, to be compared with the Italian market-situation: here warning labels were introduced only in 1991, and cigarettes consumption started to decline much later (1985).
The first Italian tobacco products liability case, following this pathbreaking legal route never used before in the world, offers an inspiring route to other countries, where consumers have been left at a competitive disadvantage (less information) vis-a-vis the US population.
Given the magnitude of the harm, and the huge administrative costs of tobacco litigation, the establishment of an administrative scheme operating under the modern rules of market-share liability is also advisable.
For further reference and bibliography, see also M.Stalteri & C.La Vecchia, JAMA, 275, 278 (1996).
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