Litigation is an important tool for holding the tobacco industry accountable for its behavior, compensate those who have been harmed by their products, and encourage or force the industry to change its behavior. Tobacco companies are immensely profitable because they are not required to pay the enormous human or financial costs caused by their products. Litigation is a means of forcing the companies to “internalize” these costs and force them to change their harmful practices.
For decades, litigation against the tobacco industry was doomed to failure. The industry was able to use its vast resources to vigorously defend itself against all suits. Generally, the industry succeeded in convincing juries that smokers bore sole responsibility for their illnesses because, (paradoxically) although the dangers of smoking were unproven, they were known to all.
More recently, tobacco industry defenses have begun to crumble, thanks to previously confidential industry documents released by whistleblowers, the Minnesota settlement and and other cases, and the ability of plaintiffs to combine resources through class-action suits. Because the public now knows that the industry has long known of the addictive nature of nicotine and of the enormous health hazards of tobacco products, and has behaved in a manner that has hurt the public, the industry has begun to lose cases. And, as large classes of individuals have combined resources, and state and federal governments have brought cases against the tobacco industry, their financial resources appear less daunting. |
