Big Tobacco has already begun to pass around the "political parrot" talking points. They, for the most part, completely ignore what the "Engle class" injured smokers' case is all about.
They used Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in Winston commercials; even Wilma was advertising for them!
They even drafted doctors to not only make smoking acceptable, but healthy for you. The message is that doctors are busy, important people, so when they smoke, they pick Camel; a busy, important person's cigarette--good for you, too!
As late as the '90's, Joe Camel is telling our kids that smoking is Cool and the manufacturers are manipulating nicotine levels in "light" cigarettes.
So, do we blame the injured smoking victims who were taught, seduced, and trained to smoke cigarettes or should we look at an industry who has manipulated the media, the government and the very drugs they put in their product. Do we really believe that these sick, dying, and dead victims seek to profit from their suffering or is it more likely that they seek some semblance of justice over an industry who has made billions in profits through manipulation?
Political parrots or intelligent, thinking Americans; you make the choice!
]]>Although the justices set aside a $20 million punitive damages verdict, they found that Big Tobacco, once again, withheld harmful information and "established procedures to ensure negative information did not reach the public". In fact the court set forth that the facts in the case rose to a level of clear and convincing evidence of Big Tobacco's wrongdoing.
The Daily Herald reported that:
The decision was noteworthy in two respects. First, the court found evidence of deliberate wrongdoing by a tobacco company. And second, the court ruled for the first time that the surviving families of tort victims can sue even if the victims had previously brought suit themselves.]]>
You can continue developing your habit, because you'll be getting plenty of help from Big Tobacco. You can depend on the fact that Big Tobacco is going to keep the nicotine levels in your cigarettes dangerously high to satisfy your desire. Besides, you can feel soothing self-satisfaction because you have style when you smoke.
That's the case because Big Tobacco is a "specialized, highly ritualized and stylized segment of the pharmaceutical industry."
(At least, that is what Reynolds Tobacco researcher, Claude Teague is writing in a memo to the top brass in the tobacco industry. While Claude is drafting the memo, you are probably at your peak, enjoying your daily cigarette highs. In Claude's view, the unregulated pharmaceutical, nicotine in cigarettes, is working efficiently to keep you coming back for more. In the late 1960's, nicotine has been dragging you away from your "pre-smoker" status and making you a full-fledged puffer. All you need to do now is to keep smoking at least 5 cigarettes a day).
During any given day, cigarette number 5 will be the one to keep you hooked. So, you will have a better than even chance of participating in your predictable, absentee testimony. Just keep watching Big Tobacco's 60's TV ads for reassurance that smoking's the thing to do and all's well when you do it.
As time goes on, you shouldn't be worrying about waking up to a horrible reality, even If you reach the 1970's. Don't worry. We'll be doing our part to create a kind of hush all over the Tobacco Industry about nicotine being addictive. Big Tobacco will continue to help you toward reaching your ultimate goal by using lots of clever, get-around-the-1969-restrictions ads about how safe it is for you to smoke.
Big Tobacco's secret is safe with you.
(However, you're not safe, but Big Tobacco doesn't want to rain on your parade). Therefore, just keep puffing and you will get that rare opportunity to testify from the grave, so to speak, while Big Tobacco's attorneys watch. Now that'll be a very attention-getting appearance.
While you continue smoking, you don't have to be concerned that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Big Tobacco research will be revealing any information that might motivate you to reconsider your habit. Just don't ask, and we won't tell. We will make sure that you won't find out that R.J. Reynolds' scientist, Joe Bumgarner and two dozen of his research associates have found evidence, early on, that smoking causes emphysema. Iit might spoil your sweet dreams about your resurrection.
(Bumgarner et al. were fired in 1970 for discovering that rabbits got emphysema after exposure to cigarette smoke. They made the mistake of wanting Big Tobacco address the issue. R. J. Reynolds had to fire those researchers because the laboratory rabbits were isolated from the general environment. Because of the isolated environment, R.J. Reynolds couldn't blame the rabbits' emphysema on big city pollution, on working with asbestos, or working in a coalmine. Years later, Bumgarner would testify at deposition before a sizeable army of attorneys; many more lawyers than you might find in any one decent-sized town in the United States . The list Big Tobacco lawyers present at that deposition was extenstve. For some reason, Mr. Bumgarner's testimony must have been important enough to command such a large and distinguished audience).
...So, don't do much thinking about how smoking affects your health, just keep on puffing away, you're hooked anyhow, and you really can't quit without having the perserverence of a gaggle of scribing monks, and you probably won't have that kind of perserverence. So don't concern yourself wiith minutia.
During your shortened lifetime, if you feel tired at times and don't have the energy, you can always mesmerize yourself into believing that everything's status quo. Just keep listening to Big Tobacco ads on TV, the radio, in the movies, or by reading glossy ads in every popular magazine.
You've come a long way baby from the time you first started puffing at the tender age of 14. You shouldn't stop now. Besides why quit? There's nothing wrong with smoking. Doctors and Movie stars are telling you that they do it all the time, and they love it.
What does the Surgeon General know, anyhow? If by chance you make it to the 1990s, you will hear that there's still no proof, after hundreds of millions of dollars of research showing otherwise, that smoking is harmful; it's still only a myth. Just keep fucusing on your goal.
(At a Congressional hearing in 1994, a team of Big Tobacco's CEOs [with the perserverance of a gaggle of scribing monks] testified that nicotine was not addictive).
But enough of this peripheral advice. Let's get to the point.
If you smoke in the latter half of the 20th Century, you'll have a good chance at "being there" for your posthumous day in court at the beginning of the 21st Century. Pay close attention, now. Be sure to keep good records along the way, just to be sure that you'll have enough evidence to go to court in the first place. It's going to be a hurdle obtaining decades-old records. So get those empty folders ready. Be certain to request certified records from your health care providers every now and then, and always question them about the exact date of your diagnosis. Courts can be very finiky about lapses of time. Any your attorney will be "hog-tied" and unable to proceed on your behalf, if there's no available documented evidence.
That's what Big Tobacco should have told their consumers right from day one. But Big Tobacco was too busy cooking up the decades of deception that produced unsuspecting candidates, like Jean Connor, for posthumous testimony.
Jean Connor was a consummate chain smoker, the first witness to testify at her wrongful death trial. She testified in an hour-long videotaped testimony in 1997. That was two years after Jean had died at age 49 of lung cancer. And Lance Burton wasn't even present in the courtroom to wave a magic wand to make it all happen. Jean became hooked on cigarettes sometime in 1960 at the age of 14, and she never looked back.
(At trial, Big Tobacco's attorneys got to do something that Jean couldn't do, watch her video. They were probably all thinking that the Tobacco lawyer that cross examined Jean in the video wasn't really on top of his game...that any one of them could have done a better job at cross-examining Jean, if she were actually present in the courtroom; those attorneys were far removed from Jean's pain and suffering. They had lived two years longer than Jean, pain free, and they weren't sitting only five feet away in Jean's presence like their Big Tobacco colleague was in the video. He wasright there, bedside, watching Jean writhing in pain during her testimony. That'll tug at anyone's heartstrings, even if there are only a few such strings left to tug on).
In the aftermath of the kind of horror described above, one court has stated the following:
A legal basis for punitive damages is established in products liability cases where the manufacturer is shown to have knowledge that its product is inherently dangerous to persons or property and that its continued use is likely to cause injury or death, but nevertheless continues to market the product without making feasible modifications to eliminate the danger or making adequate disclosure and warning of such danger.
(The above quotation and the basis for this blog was taken from a summary of testimony during Jean Connor's trial, and from the court's earlier Order Granting Plaintiff's Motion And Proffer To Plead Punitive Damages Against Defendant; R.J. Reynolds, Raulerson v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Case No. 95-01820-CA., Florida 4th DCA).
At age 49, Jean had lost her battle to live, and in 1997 Jean's estate had lost at trial, but it seems clear that in the future...
There ought to be a penalty.
]]>It is a well-known fact that adolescents who smoke can look forward to retardation in lung growth, high phlegm production, leading to an increase in the number and severity of respiratory illnesses, and a decrease in lung function. As of 2003 in the United States, 4.5 million adolescents were smoking, and 800,000 individuals under the age of 18 years were joining the ranks of regular smokers, annually; that's nearly 2000 per day. If this rate of increase were to continue, we could look forward to losing about 6.4 million children, who would die prematurely from a smoking related disease. Even today, 5.5% of eighth graders smoke daily. Adolescents who have smoked as little as five packs report that they would like to quit, but they can't. And there is a correlation between smoking and higher incidents of using alcohol and drugs.
There is evidence that those who take up smoking before they are 20 years old have the highest incidence and onset of coronary heart disease and high blood pressure. Fatty buildup in arteries begin in childhood, and smoking increases that buildup.
However, children do not have to live in Greenland to enjoy the hazards of smoking. In the United states, today, even after all the controversy, warnings, and lawsuits to date, a whopping 59% of American children ages four (4) that's right...4 - 11 are exposed to secondhand smoke at home. Is there any wonder why incidents of childhood bronchitis, pneumonia and asthma continue to be on the rise? Asthma is now the leading chronic disease among American children. And according to US Government Data (HCUP Fact Book No 4),
Respiratory conditions are the most common reason for non-neonatal, non-maternal hospitalizations among children (pediatric illness). Pneumonia, asthma, and acute bronchitis account for 1 in 5 hospitalizations for pediatric illness. Asthma and pneumonia remain among the top 10 reasons for hospitalizations among all pediatric age groups.
Even if everyone stopped smoking today, we would still be left with millions of people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. We in the USA and elsewhere around the globe must avoid the situation reported in Greenland.. We have to send Big Tobacco a message that things are no longer as $green$ in America as they are in Greenland...and just thinking about all of this once in a while should make it easy to conclude that...
There ought to be a penalty.
Big Tobacco's representative at the meeting, former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice, Phil Carlton said, When we told them we were willing to do away with the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, I thought the AGs were going to have a heart attack. They were shocked."
After sitting in the litigation catbird seat for five decades, and prevailing in nearly 100% of plaintiff suits ever filed against them...why would Big Tobacco ever call a truce, especially now?
Because with every passing day, the media was pounding home the message that Big Tobacco was devious; its products were dangerous... had lots of risk and little benefit; and its products were addictive, and no different than any other illegal drug. The media was also bringing home the message that Big Tobacco's products were polluting the air that we all breathe; and that children were falling prey to the pollution and addiction that would be following them, in a stepwise fashion, all the way from their gestation, into their teens and beyond into their early graves.
In the midst of this massive media onslaught, one framed with whistle blowers and savvy mass torts attorneys, Big Tobacco knew they could no longer always fight and win by spending hundreds of millions. Instead, they would have to spend billions, with much less chance of success.
As a result. Big Tobacco wanted a peaceful surrender to allow it to morph its empire once again; to make the media frenzy go away; to dazzle the AGs with a seemingly huge settlement; and to throw some prime rib at what Big Tobacco considered the contingent fee, mercenary attorneys who were the effective backbone of the state tobacco suits.
After the state settlement of course, all eyes, including those of the media, were on the attorneys, who bought faster planes, bigger boats and nicer cars. One mass torts attorney took home one billion dollars in fees. It seemed that obscene amounts of money were being handed out in contingency fee payments. Whether the fees were deserved or not, the appearance of undue opulence damaged the consumers' cause against the tobacco industry.
As a result of this focused publicity on contingency fees, congress and the general public became less interested in pushing for much needed regulation. The overreaching was clear. Everyone had tried to accomplish too much with a single settlement agreement. Likewise, the McCain Comprehensive Tobacco Bill died on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the same reason, attempting to accomplish too much with a single Bill. This is the result that Big Tobacco probably anticipated. The whole reason behind the settlement went up in smoke.
So, what has happened since 1997? Why it's business as usual.
Since 1997, Philip Morris has had a 36% rise in profit ($4.6 Billion in FY 2005), and a doubling in the company's stock price since the first state lawsuit in1994. But, only 8% of the $61 Billion received to date in state settlement payments has gone toward anti-smoking efforts. The remainder has funded ordinary state expenses and tax cuts. And $15 Billion went to the private attorneys who spearheaded the success of the litigation. But money isn't everything.
Most of all, Big Tobacco has taken a lesson from popular singer, Madonna and reinvented itself once again. The Marlboro Man, the real one who appeared in the commercials, has since died of lung cancer from years of smoking cigarettes, but his spirit lives on. Joe Camel, who walked a mile away from state settlement controversy is back once again, and bigger than ever with the kids. That's because R.J. Reynolds has brought them candy flavored Camels. Except for the coy reinvention of Big Tobacco's business methods, things have not changed. There ought be more media coverage of this continuing insanity. But most of all...
There ought to be a penalty.
There ought to be a penalty.
]]>In fact the District Court (D.C. Circuit), Judge Gladys Kessler, denied Philip Morris, et al., their Motion for stay of judgment pending appeal of her decision, finding that the major tobacco defendants have violated, and continue to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). After hearing arguments, Judge Kessler fully understood that Big Tobacco has not stopped and does not intend to stop manipulating the design and composition of cigarettes to addict the public. Likewise, Big tobacco has no remorse about deceiving Americans of all ages, particularly children, about "health benefits" from smoking "low-tar" cigarettes.
The Kessler decision (at 449 F.Supp.2d 1) was so long (approximately 1600 pages) that Westlaw, the company that reports the Court's decisions, had to divide it into six (6) parts. The Kessler decision included several hundred pages of briefs and other related documents, for example, trial filings for corrective statements, witness declarations, emergency motions, oppositions, motions to intervene, offers of proof, memoranda, reply memoranda, and Amicus briefs, just to mention a few. After years of litigation, Big Tobacco has become expert at piling on a myriad of paper to delay-and-confuse. Such confusion and delay has allowed Big Tobacco to make end runs around the justice system, while continuing to ply its corrupt activities in the marketplace.
After the D.C. Circuit's judgment, Big Tobacco came whining to Judge Kessler about a nagging economic need for a stay of judgment that would be effectively tugging at tobacco's purse strings. To Big Tobacco's detriment, Judge Kessler held that tobacco companies had lied to the American public for decades-and, much worse, that Big Tobacco continues to lie-about the risks of their products and to lie in their marketing to children. The bottom line: Big Tobacco has caused enormous harm to our nation's health (see 449 F.Supp.2d 988, and the other five sections of Judge Kessler's opinion).
Judge Kessler responded to Big Tobacco's lame argument in the following eloquent manner:
[T]he Court concludes that the public interest will be best served by denial of the stay pending appeal, that there is a very substantial likelihood that many individuals (particularly impressionable youth, and the vulnerable very young and very old exposed to ETS [Environmental Tobacco Smoke]) will be harmed if the stay is granted, and that those considerations far outweigh Defendants' purely economic concerns about losing what may, at most, be unrecoverable market share if the stay is denied.
Wonderful, you say? Hold your horses! According to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the Court's opinion, Judge Kessler also concluded, that a prior D.C. Circuit Court ruling prevented her from ordering appropriate remedies commensurate with the enormity of the harm. As a result, the ACS has suggested that all public health leaders urge the Department of Justice to appeal the Court's remedies, and to seek stronger remedies. One of the stronger remedies that the ACS had mentioned in its letter to U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales was: "Significant financial penalties if tobacco companies continue to market to our children and fail to achieve targets for reducing youth smoking rates."
There ought to be a penalty.
]]>For those claimants with lung cancer, it may be enough to simply show that you were a regular smoker. This is because the vast majority of lung cancers are due to smoking. After all, tobacco claimants are not held to a standard of proving beyond a reasonable doubt, a causal connection between their lung cancer and cigarette smoking. Preponderance is enough. The benefit of the doubt should go to the lung cancer victim who can show years of smoking. The link is physically direct, epidemiologically direct, and morphologically direct. The claimant's argument should not require as many hours of expert testimony, and nothing is left to the imagination about the gravity of the situation. But that has not been enough in the past to satisfy individual causation claims.
The question is, "Can litigation ever make it possible for an individual to run a general causation race, jump over individual causation hurdles, and finally cross the finish line of individual causation?" The answer is, "It will be a marathon of hurdle races." Something is missing from the tobacco litigation landscape.
The missing theories in tobacco litigation are alternative and market share liability. Proof of general causation should be enough to establish individual causation and liability. The costs of accidents or causally related illnesses should be directly related to the cost of manufacture. Those costs should be included in the price of the product. Cigarettes are a dangerous product that can't be made safe. Therefore warnings are fruitless, or at least de minimis, and product design is not the issue. Good manufacturing practices are not helpful, either.
If all smoking is bad for your health, then it should not matter what brand a claimant smoked. The Complaint in City of New York v. The Tobacco Institute, Inc., filed with the Clerk of Court of the Supreme Court of New York states the elements of alternative and market share liability very well:
D. Alternative and Market Share LiabilityThe different brands of cigarettes smoked by consumers are of substantially similar composition and are commercially fungible. Similarly, the different brands of smokeless tobacco products used by consumers are of substantially similar composition and are commercially fungible.
On information and belief, the health effects of cigarettes produced by different manufacturers are essentially indistinguishable, as are the health effects of smokeless tobacco products produced by different manufacturers.
The passage of time, the lack of information in many cases of the brand of tobacco product used at various points of time by an individual consumer, and the switching of brands by many consumers during the time they used tobacco make it impossible in many cases to identify the manufacturer responsible for any consumer's particular tobacco-related disease.Upon information and belief, during the relevant time period, defendants, except for defendants [ ], individually and/or collectively, accounted for virtually the entire production of tobacco products in the United States.
Under alternative liability, each defendant tobacco company is, therefore, jointly and severally liable.
Under market share liability, each defendant tobacco company is, therefore, severally liable for its proportionate share of the market.
It seems that alternative or market share liability is the only fair way to put a fair breath of life back into tobacco litigation. That is, the breath taken away from thousands of tobacco claimants...Otherwise...
There ought to be a penalty.
]]>The Court mentioned that punitive damages cannot be grossly excessive, but did not define "excessive" with any exactitude. In addition, punitive damages cannot be awarded to "strangers to the litigation."
Because Jesse Williams believed the Philip Morris chorus that smoking cigarettes was safe, when such was dangerous, Williams died as a result. The Williams Jury in Oregon awarded Jesse's estate $821,000 in compensatory damages, and another 100 times that amount, or $79.5 Million in punitive damages for the company's deceit. The Oregon trial court reduced the punitive award to $32 Million. The Appeals Court raised the award back up again. PMI took it up to the US Supreme Court the first time, and the Supreme Court remanded it back to the appeals court in Oregon, which did not rule any differently. PMI then appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court, adding that it did not think that the US Supreme Court would overturn their decision, but it did so, yesterday.
This brings us to the Engle decision in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court decertified the class, which means that every claimant has to file separately, in behalf of themselves and no other. Proper pleading and Jury instructions (to award only the claimant and not to exceed 9 times the compensatory damages in awarding punitive damages) should eliminate repeating the outcome of the Williams case.
If I were Big Tobacco, I would think long and hard about the implications. Even a remittitur to 5 times compensatory for each successful claimant would seem reasonable, and it would not financially break the backs of Big Tobacco; it would set a precedent, nationwide, concerning success with punitive damages pleading. Even if it is downsized...
There ought to be a penalty.
It has taken the Engle courts over a decade to painstakingly reach the decision that the tobacco defendants have released an unreasonably dangerous product, addiction formulated cigarettes, into the marketplace. We are now clear that cigarette smoking caused an estimated former class of an esimated 700,000 smokers in Florida to contract a list of several diseases. Meanwhile,a multitude of those smokers have been dying. Some had already passed away before the Engle litigation had begun. In fact many of their doctors are no longer alive either. Despite all that, for the moment because of procedural difficulties, tobacco has sidestepped the $145 billion punitive damages Jury award against them.
Meanwhile during this lull, it's business as usual for Tobacco. Right around the time the Florida Supreme Court handed down its revised opinion in Engle, Philip Morris closed a whopper of a deal in Pakistan. On January 19, 2007, Philip Morris International (PMI) announced that it would be acquiring an additional 50.21% stake in Pakistan's Lakson Tobacco Company, LTD (Lakson). The fact is that PMI already owns 40% of Lakson, so PMI now has control of over 90% of that company.
Reportedly, PMI will pay a hefty amount of cash for that acquisition. Evidently, the potential $146 Billion punitive damages award isn't giving PMI any pause about future investment in cigarette production. PMI seems bound and determined to forge ahead in foreign countries that will permit it to sell cigarettes to children, or to formulate more addictive cigarettes any way it pleases, activities now forbidden in the US.
Lakson is no small concern, it produces about 30 billion cigarettes a year, holds 47% of Pakistan's growing cigarette market, and Lakson also manufactures Marlboro cigarettes. PMI's President for the Western Asia Region stated that his company was looking forward to further solidify its market position and to ensure the continued success of PMI in Pakistan.
Enough about success stories and rags to riches regalia. Let's focus our attention back on the 700,000 potential claimants in Engle. The claimants (or their estates, more likely), and their attorneys are already taking a closer look at what will be necessary to file individual causes of action in Florida. Can you imagine 700,000 requests for medical records? That thought should send shudders up and down the spines of providers, everywhere. How about filing 700,000 complaints, or serving 700,000+ sets of interrogatories and 700,000+ production of document requests upon defendants...and then serving another 1.4 million such requests upon plaintiffs? Let's not even venture to think about the potential millions of deposition tomes both sides will generate. Of course, there will be several million motions, millions of memoranda of law, millions of letters to and from counsel, to and from the courts, etc. Maybe we should all invest in Boise Cascade, Georgia Pacific, or FedEx.
And all of those myriads of potential claimants now have less than one year, that is, until the middle of January of 2008 to file their individual complaints. It is no wonder Judge Robert Kaye of the Eleventh Circuit, in his Final Judgment and Amended Omnibus Order in Engle, stated the following:
At the close of Defendants' case, it has become apparent to this Court that class action treatment is superior to pursuing this matter by individual claims. If Plaintiffs were required to try their cases individually, issues such as reliance, causation, defendants knowledge, intent, or reckless disregard, and defendants' financial capacity, etc., will have to be litigated many thousands of times. This is more then mere speculation. After having sat through the enormous complexities involved in this trial, it is self-evident that any trial would have to involve similar proceedings. And if there were to be individual trials, it is inevitable that the common issues of Defendants' conduct would become a predominant aspect of each trial, which could result in conflicting verdicts- thus proving that common issues become the most prominent aspect of this case.
Perhaps judicial economy might have best been served by creating a limited number of plaintiffs' classes, corresponding with each type of court-listed disease. At least there would have been logical aggregations of plaintiffs with common issues, and perhaps an opportunity for more efficient management.
Judging from all of the above, everything concerning Engle is up in the air, and the air is thick with substance and procedure. Tobacco, however, is continuing to enjoy a monopoly on time and it has more than a modicum of tobacco resources that will permit it to extend the now 12-year-old waiting period, yet another decade or so.
Among those tobacco resources are the millions of smokers that Philip Morris now controls and continues to cultivate in Pakistan, and those like them, who are being lured to a life of addiction and illness elsewhere in the smoke-ridden hinterlands of un-regulated opportunity.
By the way, PMI's share of punitive damages in Engle was somewhere around $79 Billion of the $145 Billion dollar Jury award. What does this mean to PMI? Let's take a look at some simple numbers. PMI boasts the following for FY 2005:
2005 results Net revenues: USD 45.3 billion Operating companies income: USD 7.8 billion Unit volume: 804.5 billion Worldwide market share: 15% Source: PMI
Let's do the simple math. If PMI continues to sell 804.5 billion cigarettes a year, in ten years it would sell 8 trillion cigarettes. That would mean that if PMI charged only one (1) cent extra per cigarette over that 10-year period, it could support the punitive damages award in style and have a billion left over to purchase a couple of more companies as large as Lakson. Punis or no punis...they're not going out of business anytime soon. That is one primary reason why...
There ought to be a penalty.
]]>Now we discover that after being sued repeatedly for negligence, fraud and conspracy, Big Tobacco is at it again; manipulating the levels of nicotine and the addictiveness of their drug. and Tobacco Information.
A recently released Harvard study concludes that cigarette makers have for years increased nicotine levels in cigarettes to make cigarettes more addictive. Dr. Gregory Connolly led the rseaerch at Harvard and said:
"We know from our data that there are intentional design changes that result in more nicotine in smoke that increases the capacity for the cigarette to cause and maintain addiction"
Dr. Gregory Connolly and colleagues, at Harvard University, undertook a far more sophisticated analysis of the underlying data provided by cigarette-makers. The Harvard group found that nicotine yields from smoking had increased an average of 1.6 percent each year from 1998 through 2005.
So why does lawsuit after lawsuit not discourage Big Tobacco from trying to manipulate and control? The answer must be the billions produced through the public's continued addiction to Big Tobacco's drug.
For more on this conduct, see our other blog at these links:
Tobacco Will Kill More People than AIDS by 2015 and Light Cigarettes Sound Better--and That's What Tobacco was Going For! and Tobacco.
]]>The October 20, 2006, issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology reports the details of this multicenter, randomized phase II trial.
]]> A news release on CancerConsultants.com details the study:Standard treatment for patients with extensive SCLC include VePesid® (etoposide) plus Platinol, VePesid plus Paraplatin or Camptosar® (irinotecan) plus Platinol. However, due to poor long-term outcomes in this disease with current therapies different chemotherapy combinations continue to be evaluated. Alimta is a folate acid antagonist approved by the FDA for treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).Researchers from several medical institutions in the United States recently conducted a clinical trial to evaluate the addition of Alimta to Platinol or Paraplatin for the treatment of 78 patients with extensive-stage SCLC. Patients were randomly allocated to receive Alimta with either Platinol or Paraplatin.
If you've been diagnosed with lung cancer as a result of smoking, and would like to discuss litigation with an attorney, contact a tobacco litigation specialist using the form at right.
]]>According to an article on Forbes.com, the results of this monumental trial were announced on Monday, October 23 in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the American College of Chest Physicians annual meeting.
]]> The American Lung Association reports more than 122,000 American deaths each year from COPD, most as a result of smoking. A progressive respiratory illness, COPD has become the number four killer in the United States.The drug trial involved the combination of an inhaled corticosteroid called fluticasone propionate (Flovent/Flonase) with a bronchodilator called salmeterol (Advair) to treat COPD. Researchers say that this magical combination actually pushes back the disease and improves patient survival.
The Forbes.com article offers a quote from a field expert, citing the significance of this discovery:
"This is one of the most important trials that's ever been done in this field. The study clearly showed a benefit, and I think our practice will follow the information from this clinical trial," said one expert, Dr. Ron Grossman, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
If you've been diagnosed with lung cancer as a result of smoking, and would like to discuss litigation with a tobacco attorney, contact a tobacco litigation specialist using the form at right.
]]>For years it has been accepted practice for big monied corporate interests to "buy" politicians. If there is any doubt, just take a look at the landslide of legislation very favorable to corporate interests that has passed in the last few years as Republicans have controlled national and state legislative bodies. However, this practice only gets the fat cats so far. In the recent past it has been a virtual cake walk for ultra-conservatives to ram consumer unfriendly legislation down our throats. There's just one problem. Usually the more favorable (onerous and oppressive to individuals) the legislation, the more likely it is to draw unfavorable judicial scrutiny.
As a result a growing sentiment has developed within conservative and their heavily contributing corporate buddies circles that they need to seize control of the courts as well.
]]> Unfortunately this may be possible because a majority of states elect their judges by popular vote. This system provides the ability for those with big cash to recruit and elect judges that they bet will rule in their favor. Litigants, legal scholars and citizens should not be left to debate whether a judge who received millions in campaign contributions from a litigant can be fair to an opponent.If true, this very disturbing trend should not be tolerated by our anyone let alone a truly independent judiciary. Strict recusal rules should be written requiring judges who received substantial contributions from sitting on a litigant's case. Especially while the case is pending!
]]>This decision comes on the heels of Judge Gladys Kessler's scorched earth opinion finding Big Tobacco guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in its development and marketing of "light" and "low tar" cigarettes. She went so far as to enjoin further manufacture, sale or advertising that suggested one cigarette was safer than another.
Many including the tobacco companies have known for years that there is nothing light about "light" cigarettes. Unfortunately that information has been kept from consumers.
All cigarettes are deadly killers. There is no such thing as a safer cigarette. At a minimum, this class action lawsuit for "light" cigarette smokers might educate consumers.
]]>