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  3. Three tobacco companies are appealing against a "historic" decision by a Canadian court to award smokers C $ 15.6bn(￡ 8.2bn)in d

Three tobacco companies are appealing against a "historic" decision by a Canadian court to award smokers C $ 15.6bn(￡ 8.2bn)in d

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问题     Three tobacco companies are appealing against a "historic" decision by a Canadian court to award smokers C $ 15.6bn(￡ 8.2bn)in damages.
    Quebec superior court justice Brian Riordan said the companies had put profits before the health of their customers, as he issued his long-awaited decision in what is thought to be Canada’s largest class-action lawsuit.
    Bruce Johnston, a lawyer with one of the firms that took on the tobacco companies, called the ruling "historic—not just for the compensation for victims but also for public health and accountability".
    More than a million smokers and former smokers in Quebec were seeking damages, on the grounds that the companies knew they were selling a harmful product but concealed the risks. The case covered two groups of plaintiffs: those who became seriously ill from smoking and those who said they could not quit.
    Riordan found for the plaintiffs in a scathing judgment against three tobacco companies—Imperial Tobacco Canada, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, a subsidiary of Philip Morris; and JTI Macdonald Ltd, part of Japan Tobacco.
    "The companies earned billions of dollars at the expense of the lungs, the throats and the general well-being of their customers," he wrote in a 276-page judgment. "If the companies are allowed to walk away unscathed now, what would be the message to other industries that today or tomorrow find themselves in a similar moral conflict?"
    One of the lawsuits was brought by Jean-Yves Blais, who died of lung cancer in 2012 aged 68. At a press conference in Montreal, his widow urged people to quit smoking. " Your health is completely lost," said Lise Blaise, carrying photos of her late husband.
    Although the cases were launched in 1998, the trial did not begin until March 2012. Proceedings concluded in December 2012 after the court heard from 76 witnesses and reviewed more than 43,000 documents.
    All three tobacco firms said they planned to contest the decision.
    Imperial Tobacco Canada said the judgment " ignores the reality that both adult consumers and governments have known about the risks associated with smoking for decades". Its parent company, British American Tobacco, one of the UK’s biggest enterprises, was the biggest faller on the London stock exchange on Tuesday, losing 1.5% of its value. In a statement to investors, BAT said no payments would be made until a request to stay the execution order has been heard.
    "There are strong legal grounds with which to challenge both the overall judgment and to seek a stay of the provisional execution order, which Imperial Tobacco Canada will do within 30 days of the original 27 May ruling," it said.
The word " scathing"(Line 1, Para. 5)most probably means______.
选项 A、favoring
B、criticizing
C、challenging
D、objective
答案B
解析 词汇题。这个题目定位到第五段第一句，线索就在这句的against；而且根据主题为王的原则可以知道法庭对于烟草公司的态度就是反对的，所以这里唯一合适的选项就是[B]选项。[C]选项虽然有质疑的意思，但是这里明显不只是质疑，而是反对。而[A][D]选项可以直接排除。
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考研英语一

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