Word: sickness
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...fact, the most zeros ever. The record award, in favor of a class of some 500,000 Floridians made sick by smoking, took punitive damages to a bold new level. And it quickly set off a heated debate over the future of Big Tobacco. Antismoking forces bluntly predicted that the ruling could eventually cause the tobacco industry to go up in smoke. But the cigarette companies, backed by Wall Street, called the award a $145 billion joke, a judicial travesty that would be snuffed out on appeal...
...that the Emmy nominations surprise me all that much. After all, they come straight from the pretentiously named National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, whose members must be worried sick that their mostly unfunny sitcoms and dull dramas are going the way of the dinosaur. Pesky "reality" programs such as "Survivor" and cheaply made game shows - as in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" - aren't going to pay any screenwriters' bills...
...trial lawyers, for their part, recently targeted Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, for sponsoring a bill that would make it harder to sue asbestos manufacturers. Their ad featured a Montana woman walking in a graveyard and accusing Burns of "standing up for the people that made me sick and killed my father...
...Magazine and has also posted Misfortune, a post-market-crash version of a certain TIME Inc. publication ("Rightsizing your family: Does your household have more mouths than food?"). It has even parodied parodies, spoofing how Budweiser's "Wassup?" ads have been overspoofed with a version that ends, "We're sick of this joke...
This class action suit, which over the course of two years had evolved into big tobacco's worst nightmare, represented roughly half a million sick smokers. The jury (who, in the judge's words, "will all be forgiven if they never want to serve on a jury again") had already decided the companies create a "defective and dangerous" product, and awarded $12.7 million in compensatory damages to three sick smokers. And Philip Morris, Liggett, et al. would have been more than happy to see the case end there. Unfortunately for them, there are a lot of sick and dying smokers...