| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Just about the time we think that the legal community in America has exhausted every way under the sun to sue the pants off of Joe Camel and the tobacco industry, around comes another cadre of enterprising lawyers having concocted yet another way to sue "Big Tobacco" once again. And this time around, the plaintiff looking to rake in the dough is none other than good old Uncle Sam himself. That's right, the US government's Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking to become the latest to strike it rich in the lawsuit lottery. And we're not talking chump change either. The lawsuit is seeking an eye popping $280 billion. Experts say this trial is rivaled in scope only by
the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft (another
government money grab). The $280 billion figure is the DOJ's estimate of
suspected illegal cigarette profits over 30 years, give or take a million
here or there. Prosecutors base the figure on $75 billion in profit — plus
$205 billion in interest and investment returns — from cigarette sales to
young adults from 1971 to 2001. The government claims that executives of the cigarette companies — Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard and American Tobacco — spawned a scheme during a private meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1953. A scheme to deceive and dupe the American public about the health risks associated with smoking. Not to be outdone, now the DOJ has spawned its own scheme to finagle these alleged ill gotten gains into its own ill gotten pockets. Unlike the state lawsuits that led to the Master Settlement Agreement and other settlements in 1998 between the tobacco industry and the states where the tobacco companies agreed to cough up $246 billion, the DOJ lawsuit is not about reimbursing the government for medical expenditures for sick smokers. Heaven forbid. Instead, the DOJ is suing for an alleged conspiracy to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking and the addictive nature of nicotine. Give me a break, Jake. Come on, enough already. The federal government damn well knew for years and years that tobacco was dangerous and linked to disease, as did just about every US citizen with an IQ in double digits. This cleverly crafted RICO suit (did I mention lawyers are involved?) claims tobacco companies misled the American public about the health effects of tobacco by denying that smoking caused disease. So what's new? Contrary to what many self serving tobacco trial lawyers may try to get you to believe, isn't it virtually impossible to find even one person who legitimately believed the tobacco companies or was legitimately misled by their denials? Let's get our collective heads out of our rears right here and 'fess up; we didn't call them cancer sticks and coffin nails for nothing, right? Let's take a gander at the facts and then we'll let
you draw your own conclusions. Once again, under the lightly veiled guise of protecting the public, government lawyers have fostered a money grab designed to suck the life out of tobacco companies and bring them further under government control. Which ultimately leads us to the basic question that begs to be asked: If tobacco is so bad for all of us (which it is) and causes an assortment of health related problems (which it does), why doesn't the US government bringing this suit simply outlaw tobacco products in this country once and for all? What are the chances of this ever happening? Slim and none, and slim just left town. After all, smoking generates billions upon billions of dollars in taxes every year and smoking generates billions upon billions of dollars in lawyer fees annually as well. And pretty soon, if the DOJ has anything to say in the matter, smoking will be generating billions in additional revenues from their own lawsuit to boot. The bottom line is short but sweet: the more money the big tobacco companies owe the governments, the more incentive there is to keep them in business. Where there's smoke, there's always going to be
money to burn. Return to Class Action Commentary page. Or check out our Stupid Lawsuit Collection by clicking here.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
