International Desk: Three major cigarette manufacturing companies will pay 3,250 million Canadian dollars equivalent to 2,360 million US dollars to settle a lawsuit filed in Canada. The three companies are Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco. Philip Morris said the money will be paid according to a plan recommended by a court-appointed mediator.

Jacob Shelley, co-director of the Health Ethics, Law and Policy Lab at Canada's Western University, said the plan, if approved, would be the largest settlement of its kind outside the United States. News agency Reuters reported this.

A lawsuit filed in a Quebec court in 2015 alleged that the three companies had known since the 1950s that their products caused cancer and other illnesses, but failed to adequately warn consumers. The court asked about one lakh smokers and ex-smokers to pay compensation for this. The incident came as a huge blow to all three companies.

In 2019, the Quebec court upheld the 2015 ruling after an appeal against the ruling. The original ruling ordered the smokers to pay C$1.5 billion. As a result, the Canadian local companies of the three companies had to seek bankruptcy protection.

Philip Morris units in Canada are Rothmans and Benson & Hedges.

British American Tobacco said last Friday that the proposed plan was a positive step towards finding a solution. Their local unit, Imperial Tobacco Canada, supported the plan's structure and said the settlement would be funded through cash and future sales of tobacco products in Canada. BAT shares fell 3.5 percent on Friday.

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