SYDNEY, (AFP) - Tobacco companies were "breathing a multi-billion dollar sigh of relief" after an Australian court threw out a class action seeking compensation for illness caused by smoking, the plaintiff's lawyer said.
Cancer patient Myriam Cauvin was seeking compensation not only for herself but for smokers in general, who the lawsuit claimed had been duped by false advertising by the tobacco industry.
Cauvin wanted compensation of more than 200 million dollars (140 million US) to be paid in to a compensation fund to help pay smokers' medical costs.
The action rested on a provision under New South Wales law allowing individuals to sue on behalf of others in cases of false advertising and misleading trade practices.
But Supreme Court judge Virginia Bell found that the individuals in such cases had to be identified to the court and refused to accept the unqualified term "and other persons" that Cauvin listed as plaintiffs alongside her own name in the lawsuit.
Cauvin's lawyer Neil Francey said the decision was disappointing and meant the end of more than two years' work.
He said the judgement had ramifications for class actions in areas such as asbestos and mobile phone disease, as well as providing a boost for tobacco firms.
"The technique of suing on behalf of other people in this way is being denied," Francey told reporters outside the court. "I imagine they will be breathing a multi-billion dollar sigh of relief."
Cauvin, 41, has been smoking since she was 10 and has undergone a lung transplant because of smoking-related cancer.
When the lawsuit was launched in late 2003, she said she had been duped into smoking by glamorous advertising images.
"The Alpine lady was gorgeous, the Marlboro man was gorgeous," she said at the time. "It was all so country, free, beautiful, fresh."