...Imperial Tobacco, JTI-Macdonald and Rothmans-Benson & Hedges had appealed a ruling that found the companies chose profits over the health of their customers...

Quebec’s highest court, which began hearing the appeal in 2016, struck down almost all of the tobacco companies’ grounds for appeal. The five-judge panel confirmed that the companies failed in their duty to inform their customers of the risks of smoking and failed to demonstrate that consumers were aware of the risk.

The judges concluded that the companies understood that their marketing strategies would expose consumers to the risk of addiction or fatal disease. “In so doing, they certainly infringed in an illicit and intentional fashion the rights to life, to personal security and to inviolability” of the plaintiffs, the court ruled...