Leslie Adamson said the white truck that stopped at the Boston housing project she grew up in brought adults and children running, much like a visit from the ice-cream man.
But instead of sweets, the truck brought free cigarette samples.
The cigarette giveaways are a central issue in a lawsuit brought against Lorillard Tobacco Co. by a man who claims that his mother was introduced to smoking as a child through the free samples and became so addicted that she was unable to quit and eventually died of lung cancer. Lorillard denies that anyone from the company gave out cigarettes to children.
Willie Evans, the son of Marie Evans, alleges in his lawsuit that Lorillard gave away Newport cigarettes in urban neighborhoods in an effort to hook black children and teenagers on cigarettes. Marie Evans died in 2002 at the age of 54 after smoking for 40 years.
Adamson, Marie Evans’ younger sister, was the first witness to testify as the trial opened in Suffolk Superior Court yesterday. She said she first began getting free cigarettes in packs of four when she was about 7 or 8 years old in the Orchard Park housing project.
“It looked like a Frosty truck,” Adamson said.
Lorillard attorney Walter Cofer acknowledged that the company gave away free cigarette samples — a common practice by tobacco companies from the 1950s through the 1980s — but said that Lorillard did not give them to children at Orchard Park.
Cofer said the company handed out samples at shopping malls and transit stations to adults in an attempt to get them to switch brands, but did not give them to children. He called the allegation that Lorillard intentionally gave out free samples to black children “disturbing.”
“It’s designed to appeal to your emotions and to make you mad, but the evidence will be ... it didn’t happen,” Cofer told the jury.
The trial may last four to five weeks. Testimony will resume Monday.
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