About

Japan Tobacco International (JTI) produces many of the world’s best-known tobacco brands, and its Canadian operations date back to 1858. Led by Peter Ogden, head of legal for Canada, the legal team consists of four lawyers, a senior legal clerk and three support staff. It is based in two locations; the Canadian headquarters in Mississauga and the factory in Montreal. As a member of the Canada executive committee, Ogden represents legal in the development of the company’s commercial strategies and is responsible for ensuring the legal function helps the company gain a competitive edge. As well as managing multi-billion dollar product liability claims against the company, the legal department is central to ensuring that JTI Canada, currently the smallest of the major tobacco companies in Canada, is able to implement activities to grow market share by winning consumers from its competitors within a highly restrictive and constantly changing patchwork of provincial and federal regulations. Within this environment, the legal team has been implementing new ideas to improve effectiveness without adding costs to the business. Legal director France Lessard, who is primarily responsible for advising the marketing and sales functions, has worked with the IT department to develop an electronic tool for legal approvals. This replaces a paper-based system and has been instrumental in speeding up process time by allowing users the ability to access the system remotely, whilst enabling items to be quickly routed to external counsel where necessary. The tool is now in the process of being deployed in other countries. The team has also adopted AI software to speed up the review of contracts received from third parties, and at the same time has implemented a new contract management policy to give responsibility back to contract owners for agreements that are considered low risk so do not need legal approval. The policy is being used as a template for other parts of JTI’s Americas region, and Lessard is now developing a tool to link the new policy to an electronic contract approvals and storage system. A nominator highlights that, ‘the team is also advising on the launch of innovative products that were not contemplated by current regulations, such as JTI’s Ploom Tech, a hybrid device that sits between an e-cigarette and a heat not burn tobacco device. And as the team is grappling with the implications of proposed regulations to ban branding on JTI’s tobacco products, at the same time it is advising on the implications of the Canadian market opening up to nicotine containing e-cigarettes’. On the litigation front, legal director Sebastien Guenette is responsible for managing the company’s defence of a range of actions. These include eight class action health-related suits and actions brought by the governments of Canada’s ten provinces, seeking recovery of costs spent treating smoking and health related diseases. This involves managing a team of external lawyers representing the company across ten jurisdictions as well as liaising with JTI’s competitors, who are co-defendants in these actions.