Word: tobacco
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...Mississippi, attorney general Mike Moore and attorney Scruggs are leading the charge with a legal theory, never before deployed in anti-tobacco suits, called "unjust enrichment." Rather than suing on behalf of specific sick individuals, a strategy that has yet to succeed, the states are claiming they are tobacco's hit-and-run victims, stuck paying out billions of taxpayer dollars each year to treat the array of health problems wrought by smoking. In other words, says one frustrated tobacco-industry lawyer, "the states are taking the position that they don't have to prove anything except the company sold...
That would explain the vehemence with which tobacco is fighting back--in some cases pre-emptively. Industry lawyers have already filed suits trying to block the possible Maryland and Texas cases. In West Virginia, Governor W. Gaston Caperton, with the support of several of his own judicial appointees, has for now effectively scuttled that action by suing his own attorney general, Darrell McGraw, on the grounds that he did not have the authority to file a Medicaid suit. A few weeks ago, Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice, following Caperton's example, filed a similar suit against attorney general Moore. Fordice, though...
...tobacco wars may be hottest in Florida right now. In the last five minutes of the last day of the 1994 session, the state legislature overwhelmingly--and according to some, unwittingly--passed Senate Bill 2110, a Medicaid amendment that holds the tobacco industry responsible for the estimated $300 million to $800 million a year the state pays to treat tobacco-related illnesses and that allows lawsuits to collect these funds to use statistical evidence compiled by the Centers for Disease Control. "Profound sneak attack," charges one tobacco lobbyist. The tobacco industry and some associated industries, like U.S. Sugar, filed suit...
...tobacco champions twist their minds around possible defenses to the suits, they appear to be falling all over themselves in a vaudeville of contradictions. On the one hand, they argue, disease cannot be definitively linked to smoking; on the other, they have suddenly begun to point out that of course cigarettes are bad for us. "How can anybody, in good faith, take the position that the risks of the use of this product are not well known to everyone?" demands Donahue. "When you come to the bottom line, what does the consuming public know? They know everything." As Philip Morris...
...lawyers are less quick with a response, however, when asked about what Florida assistant attorney general Jim Peters refers to as "the big bad bear out there": the federal perjury probe launched after seven tobacco CEOs testifying at the Waxman hearings swore that nicotine was not addictive. Philip Morris lawyers point out that their former CEO, William Campbell, did not say tobacco is not addictive: he only said he doesn't believe it is addictive, a "personal viewpoint he has every right to hold," says York. Some tobacco experts speculate that the tobacco industry may seek a deal in which...