Defendants' Enterprise Had a Common Purpose

¶The central shared objective of Defendants has been to maximize the profits of the cigarette company Defendants by acting in concert to preserve and enhance the market for cigarettes through an overarching scheme to defraud existing and potential smokers. Indeed, documents recounting the December 1953 meeting at the Plaza Hotel attended by the presidents of Defendants Philip Morris, RJR, B&W, Lorillard, and American -- a meeting called by American's president to discuss an "industry response" to research identifying cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer -- report that the executives agreed to jointly

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sponsor a public relations campaign which is positive in nature and is entirely "pro-cigarettes. . . ." [The executives] are also emphatic in saying that the entire activity is a long-term, continuing program, since they feel that the problem is one of promoting cigarettes and protecting them from these and other attacks that may be expected in the future. Each of the company presidents attending emphasized the fact that they consider the program to be a long-term one.

¶MTP0023548-3552 at 3549 (US 21411). See also Findings of Fact Section III(B). Defendants recognized that their competing companies would benefit from working together on certain common problems while continuing to compete against each other for the largest share of the cigarette market.

¶Over the next several decades, the common goal of preserving and enhancing the cigarette market, maximizing profits, avoiding costly liability judgments, and deterring or minimizing attempts to make smoking socially unacceptable remained central to the actions of Defendants. During that time, Defendants uniformly denied, both individually and collectively: that smoking had been proven as a cause of cancer and other serious diseases (while falsely promising that the industry was funding independent research to determine the health effects of smoking); that secondhand smoke caused disease; that smoking was addictive; that the industry manipulated the levels of nicotine in its products; that light and low tar cigarettes were no less hazardous than full flavor cigarettes; and that the industry marketed its products to young people.

¶The United States has shown that the Defendant members of the Enterprise who were not physically present at the Plaza Hotel meeting -- including Liggett, Altria (which was formed in 1985 and had previously been known as Philip Morris Companies), BATCo, CTR (which was first created as the Tobacco Industry Research Committee in the wake of the December 1953 meeting), and the Tobacco Institute (which was formed in 1958) -- also shared the common goals of the Enterprise and acted in furtherance of those goals. See Findings of Fact Section III. Moreover, in furtherance of the central objectives of the Enterprise, Defendants attempted to, and at times did, conceal or suppress information and destroy documents. Their purpose in taking such action was to avoid adverse liability judgments in litigation involving smoking and health issues and to prevent discovery of evidence regarding the causal link between cigarettes, addiction, and disease. See Findings of Fact Section V(H).

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