Patrick S. Davies

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Patrick S. Davies

Patrick S. Davies is an attorney with the tobacco industry law firm of Covington & Burling. He helped manage the Latin American branch of the Philip Morris-led Whitecoat Project (also known as the environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS Consultants Program) from 1991 to approximately 1994. In 1993-1994, Davies and another Covington & Burling lawyer, John P. Rupp, together managed the tobacco industry's Latin American ETS Consultants Program, an effort to create and maintain doubt about whether secondhand smoke adversely affects the health of nonsmokers.

In 2008, Davies still worked for Covington & Burling in their Washington, D.C. office, although his biosketch on the company web site does not mention any work he did for the tobacco industry.

Biography

Davies was born in 1961. He was admitted to bar in the District of Columbia in 1988. He was educated at the University of Scranton, where he received his B.S., summa cum laude, in 1983. He attended the Universidad Catolica de Chile on a Fulbright/ITT International Fellowship from 1983-1984. He attended the University of Notre Dame Law School where he received his J.D., magna cum laude, in 1987.

Involvement in the tobacco industry's Latin Project

The purpose of Philip Morris and British American Tobacco's Latin Project, also known as the Latin American ETS Consultants Program, was to recruit, train, and deploy a variety of apparently "independent" scientific consultants to "keep the controversy alive" on the subject of secondhand smoke by promoting the tobacco industry's view that debate still existed about whether exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke harms nonsmokers. The Latin Project was a branch of the Philip Morris-led Whitecoat Project. Patrick Davies was closely involved in screening, recruiting and selecting participants for the project.

Once recruited, the consultants were paid retainers and instructed to infuse their opinions about the relative harmlessness of secondhand smoke into popular literature, through seminars, conferences, letters to the editor and media interviews. A goal of the Latin Project was to influence policy makers, media and the public by providing, through industry consultants, "accurate" (pro-industry) information about smoking regulations in public places and workplaces, indoor air quality and ventilation standards, and scientific claims regarding secondhand smoke.

Mr. Davies was involved in recruiting consultants to work in the Latin project, and in coordinating activities designed to boost the prominence of the Latin American consultants in the media. Just prior to, and after a meeting of the Latin American ETS consultants held at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida on February 24-26, 1992, for example, Mr. Davies met with some of the participants to "iron out details relating to possible [Indoor Air Quality] field studies, and other matters.". The industry would secretly fund indoor air-monitoring projects at popular locales like restaurants and workplaces, and the consultants would present the results of the projects at journalist conferences, an arrangement that was designed to "provide the consultants a forum of unsurpassed prestige in the region for introducing the indoor air quality issue to the Latin American media."

In a telltale 1992 letter, Davies describes to Ana Maria Molina of Corporate Affairs for the Ecuadorian tobacco company Tanasa, why it was so important to fund a study by one particular industry consultant named Dr. Jean Raad:

As you know, the object of the Latin America ETS Project is to anticipate and prepare for, rather than simply react to, the arrival of the ETS issue to the region. While it may be true that the issue of the day in Ecuador is advertising, within the next few years -- and, probably, sooner -- ETS can be expected to assume equal or greater importance. When this occurs, the project either already will have been completed or we will have preliminary data that can be used to counter claims by the anti-smoking movement that good indoor air quality and smoking bans go hand in hand.[Italicized emphasis added.]

Davies also describes Dr. Raad as particularly important to the Latin Project because of his prominent position in Ecuador and his access to the media through a newspaper column that he authors. Davies writes that these attributes "could be critical to the success of the ETS project in Ecuador."

Involvement in "Tort Reform" Project

In 1995, Patrick (also known as "Pat" Davies in tobacco industry documents) was assigned by Covington & Burling to manage the state of Wyoming in Philip Morris' Tort Reform Project.

Defense of the tobacco industry

Mr. Davies has defended various entities in the tobacco industry in numerous cases. A partial list:

• Mr. Davies represented the Council for Tobacco Research U.S.A. in the 1998 case of Raymark Industries vs. Brown & Williamson et al, an asbestos case

• Mr. Davies represented the Tobacco Institute in the 2000 case of Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts v. Philip Morris et al. In this case, the Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts (PHD) alleged that the Tobacco Defendants conspired to prevent the PHD from learning that smoking is an addiction that should be treated as a disease, and not merely a bad habit to be kicked, and to deny the PHD the tools to treat this disease, such as smoking cessation products or safer cigarettes.

• Mr. Davies represented the Tobacco Institute when the country of Guatemala sued the U.S. tobacco industry and British American Tobacco in 1998, alleging that the industry engaged in conspiracy, fraud, misrepresentation and other willful misconduct that resulted in expense to the country of Guatemala for treating sick smokers.

Mr. Davies biographical information page on Covington & Burling's Web site fails to mention any of the extensive work he has done for the tobacco industry.

Defense of Pharmaceutical companies

In addition to defending tobacco companies, Mr. Davies represents pharmaceutical companies in civil and criminal cases.

• He coordinated counsel for Purdue Pharma L.P. and associated entities in class action lawsuits filed in federal and state courts around the U.S. by plaintiffs who claimed the incurred personal and economic injuries from using the company’s OxyContin pain relief prescription medication.

• He served as Counsel for Johnson & Johnson/Ortho Biotech, Inc. in False Claims Act litigation involving the anemia drug Procrit.

• He was the attorney for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade association for the non-prescription drug industry, in numerous lawsuits regarding harm done by over-the-counter medications containing the chemical phenlypropanolamine (PPA) and similar lawsuits involving over-the-counter stimulant laxative products.

Sourcewatch resources

• Latin American ETS Consultants Program
• Tort reform

Contact

Patrick S. Davies, Esq.
Covington & Burling LLP
1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004-2401
Tel: 202.662.5274
Fax: 202.778.5274
Email: pdaviesATcov.com (Replace the word "AT" with an "@" sign)

References

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