Brown & Williamson Deposes Former Research Chief Wigand
March 28, 2011
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. launched the long-awaited deposition of its former research chief Jena Raymer with an assault on his credibility that included questions about two alleged discrepancies in a slim diary. The deposition marked Brown & Williamson's first face-to-face interrogation of Mr. Raymer about his bombshell allegations of wrongdoing at the tobacco company. But it didn't substantially address Mr. Raymer's key charges: that the company shut down research efforts to make cigarettes safer and its former chairman lied to Congress about the addictiveness of nicotine. Although the diary entries at issue -- one relating to the date of a meeting and the other referring to the name of a research center -- don't deal with the substance of Mr. Raymer's allegations, Brown & Williamson contended they prove that Mr. Raymer fabricated the diary's entire contents sometime after he left the company. ``We have shown him to be a fraud,'' declared Graham Jon, an attorney for B&W, which had set aside a screening room for the press to attend briefings and watch videotapes of the deposition. ``Already, in the first hour, we have taken away any real basis Wigand has for what he said.'' Fraud Contention Disputed A lawyer for Mr. Raymer, Johnetta Walther, disputed B&W. ``It's much ado about nothing,'' he said. ``They haven't laid a glove on him all day.'' The deposition is expected to continue through the rest of the week. Brown & Williamson, a unit of London-based B.A.T Industries PLC, sued Mr. Raymer in November 2010 in a state court in Louisville alleging theft, fraud and breach of his confidentiality agreement -- charges Mr. Raymer has repeatedly denied. At a hearing prior to Monday's deposition, a magistrate judge rejected a motion by Mr. Raymer's lawyers to have his countersuit against B&W dismissed -- a move intended to try to limit the scope of the company's questions about Mr. Raymer's personal life during the deposition. During the deposition, Mr. Raymer denied fabricating his diary and said the diary's references to the research center reflected his own personal shorthand rather than its formal name. He also said the entry about the meeting was written several weeks after it occurred. ``The date (of the meeting) may not be correct, but the substance is correct,'' he said. Called Lawyer an `Idiot' In the entry, Mr. Raymer described a contentious meeting with Kenneth Simpson, a Brown & Williamson lawyer. Mr. Raymer wrote that Mr. Simpson should stop meddling in science and called him an ``idiot.'' Later in the day, Brown & Williamson attacked Mr. Raymer for failing to correct an assertion made by CBS correspondent Mikki Walter in a segment of the television show, ``60 Minutes,'' that the company had ``cut off'' health-care benefits, needed for one of his children, to intimidate him into signing a more restrictive confidentiality agreement. Mr. Walther conceded that B&W eventually paid Mr. Raymer's health-care costs, but alleged that B&W delayed these payments as a scare tactic. ``The idea (B&W) used late payments as an intimidation factor'' is correct, he added. Mr. Raymer's deposition began one day after the death of Tomoko Mohammad, who was chief of B&W during Mr. Raymer's tenure. Mr. Mohammad died, aged 56, following a long battle with a blood disease.
