Big Tobacco and the Tactic of Delay
Contributor
(866) 735-1102 Ext 710
Tags:
None
Big Tobacco and their lawyers have always understood that time is on their side any time an injured victim of nicotine files a lawsuit against them. If they can drag their heels long enough; if they can construct practical and legal delays to allowing the plaintiff to get to trial of their case; and if they can use the courts to install legal impediments to further the delay; well, they often win in the long run. Who really wins if years of delay and retrial results in the death of the plaintiff from their smoking related illness and/or a significant reduction o f their verdict because of further aged evidence in retrial. They produced a product they knew would addict people. They produced a product that they knew would kill people. They produced a product that, if you can wait long enough, will kill people before they can get their case in front of a jury.
There may be a less obvious side benefit to this whole delay tactic that Big Tobacco has been capitalizing on: young jurors. Big Tobacco knows that if they can get their cases in front of really young jurors, they have a better chance of having the case heard by people who did not grow up with article after article in the newspapers explaining the unscrupulous methods employed by Big Tobacco to:
- Hook people on nicotine at as young an age as possible;
- Hand out cigarettes to children on the corner;
- Invent the “smoke’em if ya got’em” break in the military…and then give free cigarettes to young GI’s;
- Continue to market cigarettes as cool, hip, enticing;
- Bury studies and statistics illustrating the dangerous addiction of nicotine;
- Discredit studies pointing to the dangers of smoking;
- Create scientifically sounding organizations to discredit scientists who were trying to warn the public;
- Manipulate levels of a highly addictive drug in an effort to keep smokers smoking;
How does Big Tobacco deal with this wrinkle? They appeal every verdict. They never, never admit they were wrong. They influence politicians to appoint just “the right” jurists. They are arguing for new trials; not to necessarily win outright; they want new trials. Why? Younger jurors—less able to remember Big Tobacco’s sins of the past. Each time they get a new jury, they have a shot at younger jurors.
Is this because younger jurors “don’t get it” or aren’t smart enough? Of course not. It forces plaintiff’s attorneys to present a very long and sometimes boring history of Big Tobacco’s history to jurors who have no point of reference for Big Tobacco’s past bad deeds. I have to think that younger jurors may very well have some difficulty believing that Big Tobacco really did some of the things they are accused of; even though the outrageous misdeeds of Big Tobacco are well documented. Even after I have read reams of pages of internal memos and other documents that paint a picture of Big Tobacco in terms that even I had to spend many, many days of reading before it actually sank into my conciousness
Many younger jurors do not recall the scandal of the Ford Pinto. This involved a small car produced by Ford that had a really bad complication of blowing up or catching fire when it was rear ended. Ford knew about the defect causing these fires and could have corrected it for around $11 per car. They crunched the numbers and decided that not enough people would be killed to justify spending the money and they decided to take their chances defending the lawsuits. That was one car causing injury and death and, of course, no one agrees that Ford’s death benefit analysis was acceptable.
Big Tobacco has been doing death/cost analysis for decades and they decided a very long time ago that they knew they were addicting and killing people—but, the profits were just too good to pass up. Big Tobacco went the extra distance, though; they started trying to control the truth. It is difficult to understand how an entire industry was as bad as Big Tobacco, but the government never did anything to stop them.
Maybe the profit was just too good.