Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Some legal experts beg to differ, saying the threat to tobacco is quite real. University of Miami law professor Clark Freshman notes that the state appellate courts have already ruled for the plaintiffs on two key points: the courts okayed the size of the class, and they agreed that any punitive damages could be ordered to be paid out all at once...
...last time the tobacco industry faced potentially crushing liability--at the hands of the states--it decided to settle, a course Rosenblatt seemed to encourage. Speaking after the verdict, he delivered an unusually angry--and personal--challenge to Philip Morris' CEO. "Geoffrey Bible, I'm available, pal," he bellowed to a crowd of reporters. "Mr. Bible, with all your shareholder meetings and all your stock and your $25 million bonuses, yes, and all your tough talk. Mr. Bible, call me next week. I'll take a payout...
Rosenblatt and his co-counsel, wife Susan, later took the high road, saying that by holding the tobacco companies publicly accountable, they've already racked up an important victory. "This was never only about money," Rosenblatt said. "This was about showing up these companies for what they really are." Many of the plaintiffs--some of whom are unlikely to live to collect any damages--agreed. "No amount of money is going to change the way I have to eat," says throat-cancer victim Amodeo, who has to ingest nutrition through a hole in his stomach. "Fifteen cents, $15 million...
...grim portrait. Hugh Rodham may have driven a Cadillac and owned a home in a white-bread Chicago suburb, he writes, but he was a cheapskate who refused to take care of the place, and his drapery business was a one-man shop with walls stained brown from chewing-tobacco juice. Hillary has her brother Tony to thank for many of these details, since Tony told Oppenheimer about a cousin, Oscar Dowdy, who became the source for them. Dowdy also says that Hillary's mother was given to making anti-Jewish slurs (some about Hillary's grandmother's second husband...
...Engle case is a class-action suit--the first ever tried against the tobacco industry--which means that the plaintiffs (in this instance, three) sue on behalf of themselves and others, united by a common complaint. The case bears the name of physician Howard Engle, who suffers from emphysema and was originally the lead plaintiff. For the case truly to run its course, say some legal experts, Florida would have to try each of the hundreds of thousands of complainants' suits individually--to corroborate the $145 billion aggregate penalty...