The amendment in question (pasted below) would end the inter-company wrangling over dividing the check. With it, there is now full agreement among all the parties involved – tobacco companies and their creditors. It is hard at this point to see any reason why the plan will not soon be put into force.
Rothmans, Benson and Hedges had earlier maintained it was getting a raw deal because it put more money into the initial kitty and because the Quebec court had ruled that Imperial Tobacco’s behaviour was worse and therefore it was responsible for a greater portion of the damages. In the end, Imperial Tobacco agreed that it would relinquish any claim it might have on the $750 million from that kitty that was being returned to the companies in the form of “working capital.” With that concession, RBH withdrew all of its objections to the plan.
Japan Tobacco’s affiliates (both the cigarette manufacturing branch and the trademark-owning branch) also withdrew their objections today, although there was nothing presented that would explain their change of heart. They may simply have known when to fold them: their objection was based on a desire to maintain dubious inter-corporate financial arrangements that had already been the subject of court criticism.
The longest part of today’s session was the courtroom whipping of Heart and Stroke for its temerity in filing an objection to the amendment. Ontario’s lawyer played the heavy – going on at some length about the limited role that social stakeholders should have in such a process, and accusing the agency of “abuse of process” and “egregious conduct that needs to be reined in by the court.”
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The amendment agreed to today:
Documents filed in connection with this request: