A $50 billion lawsuit launched against tobacco companies by the Ontario government fails to make clear and specific claims against their clients, tobacco company lawyers have argued in Ontario’s highest court.

Several foreign owned tobacco companies are seeking to have the claim dismissed.

The government’s submissions against the companies are “confused, misleading and uncertain,” lawyer Chris Rusnak, representing Carreras Rothmans, told an Ontario Court of Appeal panel.

The province filed a lawsuit in 2009, seeking damages dating back to the 1950s.

It claims that the companies withheld information about the harm of smoking, took no steps to reduce its effects, and marketed their products to young people.

“Taxpayers of the province of Ontario have paid a lot of money for health-care costs directly related to tobacco use over the decades,” then-attorney-general Chris Bentley said when the suit was filed.

He said tobacco-related illness costs the province $1.6 billion a year.

The companies promised to fight the lawsuit every step of the way: “The biggest losers here are going to be Ontario taxpayers,” one tobacco company spokesman had predicted.

On Monday, the fight continued at Osgoode Hall.

Guy Pratte, representing several R.J. Reynolds companies, complained that the province’s case against the companies contains general allegations not related to specific incidents, spread over a time period of 60 years.

While companies are accused in the government’s case of misrepresenting the risks of smoking, Pratte said, “it doesn’t tell you when, where and how representations were made.”

That brought a question from Mr. Justice Robert Blair, who queried Pratte just how much detail the province should be expected to file.

“Do you want a pleading 8,000 pages long?” he asked.

Pratte argued that his clients have to know exactly what they’re accused of, and how these alleged actions resulted in harm in Ontario.

In an interview during a break, he said the breadth of the case doesn’t remove the province’s obligation to be specific about its claims.

“You can’t say: ‘I’m suing you for 100,000 incidents, so I can’t particularize them,’” he said.

Rusnak hammered at the same point.

Some of the allegations are against “some or all” off the defendants, he said, leaving each the companies to figure out whether they’re being accused of these misdeeds.

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Blair wondered aloud how much a plaintiff who may have been wronged by an alleged conspiracy can know about what went on privately among the supposed conspirators.

“It’s very difficult for the plaintiff to know all the details,” he said.

The tobacco company lawyers also argued that while the lawsuit names a number of different units of the multi-national tobacco companies, some of the units and their parents don’t operate in Canada.

For example, Pratte argued that while RJR Tobacco International is named in the suit, it “never sold any product in Ontario at any time.”

Lawyers for the tobacco companies did all the talking Monday; the case is expected to take two to three days to argue.

Anti-tobacco activists watched the proceedings from the public gallery.

Rob Cunningham, lawyer for the Canadian Cancer Society, said the Ontario government is going after the foreign parents of Canadian tobacco companies because they have the ability to pay the hefty damages being sought.

“We believe they should be held accountable,” he said.

He said the tobacco companies have made arguments in B.C. and New Brunswick court cases that are similar to those they’re making now in Ontario, and have failed.

The cancer society and other health and medical groups campaigned for stricter tobacco laws as part of the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco.

With files from Canadian Press