Big Tobacco Strikes Back at Historian in Court
A Stanford University professor who has sought to expose ties between historians and the tobacco industry is being accused in court of having broken the law in challenging the employment of four graduate students at the University of Florida as researchers assisting tobacco companies in litigation.
In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month, tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal witness tampering and witness harassment in having the students put under pressure to cease working as paid researchers for a historian aiding the tobacco companies as an expert witness.
The motions, filed in connection with two personal-injury lawsuits against the companies, ask the courts to bar Mr. Proctor from serving as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Such an outcome could badly hurt their prospects of success and could jeopardize the Stanford scholar's role as one of the nation's leading experts testifying for people suing tobacco companies.
Mr. Proctor already had been involved in a bitter legal battle with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company over its efforts to force him to hand over an unfinished manuscript on the tobacco industry. That dispute has potentially major legal implications for publishers and scholars, pitting the professor's interest in retaining sole possession of a work in progress against the tobacco company's interest in obtaining whatever information it needs to defend itself in court.
The new battle over the Stanford scholar's interactions with the University of Florida raises a fresh set of thorny questions: What are the ethical obligations of professional historians who earn extra income as expert witnesses? What responsibilities do colleges have to guide or limit the outside employment of their graduate students?
The stakes are high enough that both Florida and Stanford have received subpoenas ordering them to turn over e-mail messages between Mr. Proctor and the Florida professor that he contacted with his concerns about the students' work. And those two scholars, along with a third professor, from the University of Southern Mississippi, who gave Mr. Proctor the graduate students' names, have been deposed by lawyers for tobacco companies for hours of intense questioning about their exchanges...
Read entire article at The Chronicle of Higher Education
In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month, tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal witness tampering and witness harassment in having the students put under pressure to cease working as paid researchers for a historian aiding the tobacco companies as an expert witness.
The motions, filed in connection with two personal-injury lawsuits against the companies, ask the courts to bar Mr. Proctor from serving as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Such an outcome could badly hurt their prospects of success and could jeopardize the Stanford scholar's role as one of the nation's leading experts testifying for people suing tobacco companies.
Mr. Proctor already had been involved in a bitter legal battle with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company over its efforts to force him to hand over an unfinished manuscript on the tobacco industry. That dispute has potentially major legal implications for publishers and scholars, pitting the professor's interest in retaining sole possession of a work in progress against the tobacco company's interest in obtaining whatever information it needs to defend itself in court.
The new battle over the Stanford scholar's interactions with the University of Florida raises a fresh set of thorny questions: What are the ethical obligations of professional historians who earn extra income as expert witnesses? What responsibilities do colleges have to guide or limit the outside employment of their graduate students?
The stakes are high enough that both Florida and Stanford have received subpoenas ordering them to turn over e-mail messages between Mr. Proctor and the Florida professor that he contacted with his concerns about the students' work. And those two scholars, along with a third professor, from the University of Southern Mississippi, who gave Mr. Proctor the graduate students' names, have been deposed by lawyers for tobacco companies for hours of intense questioning about their exchanges...