Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...amending its product-liability laws last year. Now it can claim damages based on general health statistics, and cigarette makers can be assessed financial penalties based on their market share, rather than having to prove that an individual patient's illness was caused by smoking a particular brand. The tobacco companies have already tried to have this new statute declared unconstitutional, and makers of other products such as alcoholic beverages have expressed concern that the law could be used against them as well. But last week, in a move that should help soothe such corporate fears, the House Judiciary Committee...
...month for oxygen, $18,000 for a nine-day hospital stay last year). Despite the tab he's already rung up, Stark still puffs his way through half a pack a day: "I just have this unbelievable craving,'' he says. Stark admits nobody made him start smoking, but since tobacco companies make the product he just can't seem to quit, he figures they're at least partly responsible for his costly state of misery...
...state of Florida agrees. Last week it filed a $1.43 billion suit against the tobacco industry to recoup money spent treating Medicaid patients with smoking-related ailments. West Virginia, Minnesota, and Mississippi have filed similar suits. Meanwhile, a U.S. district judge in New Orleans just cleared the way for a class action by three current smokers and the wife of a deceased smoker who claim that tobacco manufacturers hid the addictive properties of nicotine. If the suit proceeds, almost anyone who is "nicotine dependent" could join and seek up to $50,000 each from cigarette makers. Says Florida Governor Lawton...
...that's something the industry has avoided. More than 800 antismoking lawsuits have been filed since 1954, but not a single cigarette maker has been forced to pay a single penny in damages. Says Maura Ellis, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.: "Juries have consistently found that smokers should be held responsible for their own actions." But public sentiment began to shift during last year's congressional hearings, in which tobacco executives stubbornly refused to admit that smoking was addictive, even as internal company memos revealed that cigarette makers have long understood-and hidden-nicotine's addictive properties. Says...
Lawyers also understand that if juries begin to turn on tobacco manufacturers, the potential for making money is mind boggling. There are 46 million smokers in this country and 400,000 smoking-related deaths each year. In the Florida Medicaid case alone, the attorneys who succeed in winning the legally mandated triple damages and collecting their 25% contingency fee would divvy up a $350 million pot. So it's hardly surprising that some of the country's best product-liability lawyers have been eager to join Chiles' Dream Team. Meanwhile, 60 U.S. law firms have pledged $100,000 each...