Word: bellies
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...issue is not so simple, and the case that will be brought this week in Santa Barbara by personal injury lawyer Melvin Belli shows why. His argument rests on the notion that companies which manufacture a product ought to inform their customers of the dangers of using that product. The question is not whether smokers are responsible for their choice to smoke cigarettes. Of course they are; they're dying prematurely as a consequence of that choice. The issue is whether corporations are responsible for honestly advertising and labeling the products they manufacture...
...arguing that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the defendant in this case, knew that cigarette smoking was addictive long before this fact was made public by the U.S. Surgeon General, Belli is not attempting to mitigate somehow his client's responsibility for choosing to smoke cigarettes. Rather he hopes to establish that the company was negligent and withheld crucial information about its product. Automobile companies that manufacture dangerous cars and do not tell their customers about potential safety hazards are held liable for resulting accidents and injuries; why not cigarette companies...
...this time, personal-injury lawyer Melvin Belli thinks he has a winning strategy...
...suit that will go to trial this week in Santa Barbara, Calif., Belli says that he will contend that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the defendant, knew that cigarette smoking was addictive long before the Surgeon General's report but failed to inform consumers of the risk. He represents the family of John M. Galbraith, an insurance-company executive who died of lung cancer in 1982 at the age of 69, after 50 years of smoking...
...Melvin Belli, then, has chosen the wrong argument. His position, taken to its logical conclusion, arrives at behaviorism. And behaviorism questions the very foundations of our judicial system...