Firm Wins OK to Seek Depositions

NEW YORK —  Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. received permission Monday to seek sworn depositions from “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace and other CBS employees who interviewed whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand.

Lawyers for the Louisville, Ky.-based company will seek subpoenas for Wallace and correspondent Morley Safer, segment producer Lowell Bergmann, executive producer Don Hewitt, CBS President Peter Lund, former CBS News President Eric Ober, and CBS attorneys Jonathan Sternberg and Ellen Oran Kaden in New York state court.

CBS executives had no immediate comment on the ruling by a Jefferson County circuit judge in Kentucky.

“It is up to them if they wish to make a motion to quash or limit the subpoenas,” said Brown & Williamson attorney Jerome C. Katz. Absent those motions, he said, “the CBS witnesses must appear and testify under oath and say what it is they know about the behavior of Jeffrey Wigand.”

Wigand was Brown & Williamson’s research chief until 1993 and is the tobacco industry’s highest-profile defector. Wigand and CBS made news in November when “60 Minutes,” which had interviewed him, decided not to broadcast the segment.

Katz said it is likely that CBS will seek to block the subpoenas and that a court fight will ensue.

CBS is hip-deep in legal hassles over the story, which it has yet to air in its entirety. The segment was quashed in November by CBS management, whose members were fearful of a costly legal action.

Brown & Williamson, which fired Wigand in 1993, is suing him, alleging theft, fraud and breach of contract. The firm says Wigand broke a confidentiality agreement.

Excerpts from a deposition Wigand made in a Mississippi lawsuit were published last week, and “CBS Evening News” aired excerpts of the “60 Minutes” interview on Friday.

Wigand said in the deposition and the interview that former Brown & Williamson Chairman Thomas Sandefur lied when he told Congress that he did not believe nicotine was addictive.

CBS has announced that it plans to air the full interview on Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes.” Wallace will report this week on the “CBS Evening News” on continuing developments in the case.