Are tobacco companies lying? That’s what Sen. Ted Deutch wants to know.

The Boca Raton Democrat asked Attorney General Bill McCollum to investigate discrepancies between tobacco companies execs’ testimony to lawmakers and their corporate tax filings.

At issue is a bill (SB 2198) that would stop tobacco companies from having to post the full bond when they appeal cases they lose in cigarette lawsuits.

Tobacco executives have testified that, without the measure, they may not be able to make their annual payments to the state required by a settlement. But their SEC filings don’t mention anything about that potential liability, Deutch noted.

“My concern regarding the industry’s apparent contradictory statements was substantially heightened when I learned that these cigarette companies have been found to have committed a civil conspiracy to defraud the very Floridians who may be adversely affected should the above-referenced bill be passed into law,” Deutch wrote to McCollum in a letter hand-delivered yesterday.

Deutch referred to the 1999 verdict in the historic “Engle” lawsuit that found that cigarette companies hid information about the negative health affects of smoking and its addictive nature.

McCollum will look into it, his spokeswoman Sandi Copes said, but it’s unlikely Deutch will get a response before the measure gets a thumbs-up or down from the legislature.

“What he’s asking for is going to be a fairly time-intensive review involving hundreds of pages of documents but we will begin looking at that information to determine whether or not we have jurisdiction to proceed,” Copes said of the six-inch-high stack of materials.

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