Word: tobacco
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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...
...this any way to run a country? Critics of law-by-trial-lawyer say it's an undemocratic way for a nation to decide its approach to controversial issues like handgun and tobacco regulation. The key players--the lawyers and often the judges--are unelected, and most of the critical decisions in litigation are made in secret. "The settlements are hammered out in back rooms," says Olsen. "There are going to be losers who aren't part of the negotiations...
...member discovered that $91.33 in legal fees had been deducted from his account--although he received only $2.19 in interest from the settlement award. Even in more traditional fee arrangements, the sheer size of some damage awards can mean that lawyers end up pocketing gargantuan amounts. Fees in nationwide tobacco litigation, for example, could top $30 billion. That's money that could be going to address the underlying problems at which the lawsuits were aimed...
...their fees are justified by the amount of their own money they risk--knowing they will be paid nothing if they lose. In Mississippi alone, 12 law firms laid out about $12 million on that state's suit for research, travel, depositions and other expenses. "When we filed the tobacco lawsuits, our peers--good lawyers and great lawyers--laughed at us," says Reaud. "They told us there was no way we were ever going to win." Scruggs put almost all his financial assets at the time--about $3 million--into the case. "Some of us get paid amounts that...
...their campaign contributions, trial lawyers insist their opponents give more. Last year tobacco companies contributed nearly $1.7 million to the Republican Party. The NRA gave $478,100. "We are in a real fight, and we are the only people on this side of the fight with any money," says Mike Gallagher, a Houston trial lawyer. "Labor unions don't do it. Consumer groups don't do it. I give a lot of money, and I plan to give a lot more...