MONTREAL—It is a historic ruling in a marathon court battle, but the war to force Canadian tobacco companies to pay for the addictions and diseases that their product has caused may not yet have been decisively won.

A Quebec court judge ruled Monday that the three companies — Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald — must pay $15.6 billion as part of two class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of nearly 100,000 people who have become ill from smoking and more than 918,000 smokers who say they can’t quit the habit.

The ruling by Justice Brian Riordan blames the companies for hiding the dangerous and addictive nature of their product from the public and governments.

“By choosing not to inform either the public health authorities or the public directly of what they knew, the companies chose profits over the health of their customers,” Riordan wrote in his 276-page judgment, according to several excerpts released by the Quebec Council on Tobacco and Health.

“Over the nearly 50 years of the class period, and in the 17 years since, the companies earned billions of dollars at the expense of the lungs, throats and the general well-being of their customers.”

The judge found that the companies had breached their responsibility not to cause harm and breached their duty to inform customers about the risks of their produce. They, in fact, hid the truth about the health risks from smoking and violated their customers’ rights under the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document nearly identical to the Canadian Charter.

The cigarette manufacturers says is demonstrably false. They say Judge Riordan acknowledged governments were aware of the health risks and that this will be a main argument in their appeal of the decision.

“(The) judgment ignores the reality that both adult consumers and governments have known about the risks associated with smoking for decades and seeks to relieve adult consumers of any responsibility for their actions,” Tamara Gitto, a vice-president with Imperial Tobacco Canada, said in a statement.

Among the evidence presented at the trial, which began in 2012, was government polling and statements that, according to Rothmans Benson & Hedges, show how well-informed Canadians were about the dangers of smoking.

But there were also damaging internal business documents showing that the companies’ financial health depended on addiction.

“The only remaining ‘benefit’ of cigarette smoking is the psychological assist it provides in terms of stress reduction,” wrote Imperial Tobacco’s former marketing director Bob Bexon in the mid-1980s. “If our product was not addictive we would not sell a single cigarette next week in spite of these positive psychological attributes.”

The memorandum was part of an internal evaluation that the company carried out to assess smokers’ health concerns and was one of the first pieces of evidence filed with the court.

At the heart of the lawsuit was Cécilia Létourneau, who said she was unable to quit smoking, and Jean-Yves Blais, who died in August 2012 at the age of 68 of lung cancer and had also suffered from emphysema.

“When my husband started smoking in the 1950s at the age of 10 he didn’t know the risks linked to cigarettes,” his widow, Lise Blais, said in a statement released Monday evening. “He tried several times to stop smoking but never succeeded. Unfortunately he didn’t live long enough to see the result of this trial.”

Of the three tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco was found liable for $10.5 billion. Rothmans Benson & Hedges must pay $3.1 billion and JTI-MacDonald Corp must pay $2 billion.

The judge said Imperial Tobacco’s duplicitous activity surpassed that of the others, according to an excerpt of the ruling released by Quebec Council on Tobacco and Health.

“It was an industry leader on several fronts, including that of hiding the truth from the public.”

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While awaiting a decision on whether an appeal will be heard, the companies have been ordered to place about $1.1-billion into a trust.

Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said in an email that while this is the first lawsuit brought against cigarette manufacturers in Canada, it is unlikely to be the last. Similar class-actions are being prepared in other provinces.

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