LONDON, May 21: Ernest Jones can't forget the day in 1934 when he swiped the cigarette from his father. He was 13, and he got a good whipping. For stealing.

``I didn't like that first cigarette,'' said Jones, a former tobacco shop proprietor. ``It made me sick, made me green. But my father said, you can smoke. It'll help you grow.''

Thomas Atkinson wheezed through his one remaining lung as he recalled starting up at age 14 in 1944.``I wish to god I knew about the price of smoking,'' the retired factory worker said.

``When we smoked, there was no warning signs or nothing. In those days, it was like all the film stars were smoking. It was always smoke, smoke, smoke,' and nothing about danger to your health.''

Jones, from Croydon just outside London, and Atkinson, from Liverpool, are among 36 lung cancer victims fighting what could be a precedent-setting case against Britain's tobacco giants, Imperial Tobacco Ltd and Gallaher Ltd.

The battle is the first of its kind in Britain and could set the course of all future cases because a single judge will hear the evidence and deliver the verdict, according to plaintiffs' attorney Martyn Day.

The judge's decisions on what evidence is admitted, and how it is weighed, will apply to any similar cases that might be filed.

If the cancer victims win, thousands more who become sick each year could go to court with strong chances to succeed. Day estimated some 20,000 of the 35,000 people who get lung cancer every year in britain could collect awards of $ 80,000 each. That comes to $ 1.6, more than the two tobacco companies' annual profits of $1.44 .``It doesn't take the brains of a giant to see this would cause them difficulty,'' Day said.

Day is fighting his case under a law passed in 1995 that allows attorneys to take on ``group action'' cases, similar to class-action lawsuits in America, without taking any fees unless they win.

The thrust of the British case is that tobacco companies became aware in the 1950s that smoking was dangerous, and a few years later that nicotine made cigarettes addictive.

``They knew or ought to have known they were killing a lot of their customers,'' Day said in an interview.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.