Medicine: Cigarette Case

A factory worker from Festus, Mo. (pop. 5,199) made medico-legal history last week by suing four cigarette manufacturers and a grocery chain for $250,000. Ira C. Lowe, 39, filed his suit in St. Louis blaming them for the cancer which caused him to lose a lung.

From 1930 to 1952, complained Lowe, he smoked more than two packs of cigarettes a day. Then he got cancer. His right lung was removed at the very time when, at nearby Barnes Hospital, Drs. Evarts Graham and Ernest Wynder were doing experiments on mice with tobacco tar (TIME, Nov. 30). In suing (for breach of warranty) the four companies whose brands he said he had smoked and the chain store where he bought them,* Lowe said that he had “accepted the defendants’ public assurances that their cigarettes were free from harmful substances.”

* R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., American Tobacco Co., P. Lorillard Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.