Word: tobaccos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...moved through one marathon session after the next, taking the talks on the road from New York City to Chicago to Washington. Almost from Day One, the talks threatened to break up over any one of the three most contentious issues: punitive damages, document disclosure and government oversight of tobacco products. The first signs of serious trouble struck April 21, when Manhattan attorney Herbert Wachtell, leading the squadron of tobacco-company lawyers, demanded, "There has to be an end to the vilification." When Harshbarger calmly responded that there would be no blanket immunity for tobacco interests, recalls a participant...
...week was Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey III, who argued that his colleagues were pushing too quickly for a settlement. (And they in turn accused him of grandstanding.) "They're trying to rush this through before we realize we've had our pockets picked," Humphrey said at midweek. He claimed tobacco could pay more than twice the agreed-upon amount, or some $800 billion over the next quarter-century, without putting a dent in overseas profits, stock dividends or executive perks...
...final hang-up to the agreement had to do with disclosure of another sort: the attorneys general demanded an end to further industry prosecution of whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, the former Brown & Williamson executive who wielded company documents to help press his claim that the tobacco company had deliberately manipulated nicotine levels. Wigand, now a high school science teacher, becomes free to make whatever public statements he wants...
...would have predicted such a swift outcome back in March, when this all began with the obvious but startling admission by one of the smallest tobacco companies, Liggett Group, that cigarettes are addictive and have been pointedly marketed at kids for years. The confession signaled the first real break from the industry's see-no-evil posture. Reportedly, the event prompted North Carolina Governor James Hunt to call his friend Bill Clinton. The White House then got in touch with Mississippi's Moore to ask if talks with the industry might prove productive...
...lawyer--RJR's CEO Steven Goldstone, who before taking over the company was its general counsel and a litigator at the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Negotiated settlements were not unknown to him, and Moore had made it clear that the talks could not proceed without tobacco's top officers. Goldstone soon persuaded Philip Morris CEO Geoffrey Bible to have a sit-down with the opposition...