Greedy Trial Lawyer
A Whacky Editorial Defends Tobacco Companies
Category: In Your Face
Would it be whacky to allow a lawsuit against a developer who sold a swamp as subdivision lots? Or, a lawsuit against a drug manufacturer who sold a sugar pill as a cancer medication?
Somehow the LA Times has concluded it is whacky for purchasers of "light" cigarettes to sue tobacco companies on the grounds that there was nothing "light" about them, that they were not safer than ordinary cigarettes and that smokers of "light" cigarettes were getting sick as often as other smokers.
The editors need to have their own heads examined.
Wacky Tobacco Lawsuit
AN APPEALS COURT MUST DECIDE whether, as a matter of law, a federal judge in Brooklyn erred in refusing to block a class-action racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies on behalf of millions of smokers of "light" cigarettes. But lay people are likely to scratch their heads over District Judge Jack B. Weinstein's decision to let this lawsuit proceed -- especially when they learn that the damage supposedly caused by the tobacco industry was to smokers' wallets, not their lungs.That's right, the lawsuit certified by Weinstein alleges not that smokers of "light" cigarettes were made sick by the cigarettes they purchased but that they were misled into thinking that "light" and "low tar" cigarette designations meant they were safer. It's much easier to allege that people were duped by marketing than to show that they got sick from smoking. The lawyers bringing the suit seek to force tobacco companies to disgorge their "ill-gotten gains."
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.greedytriallawyer.com/admin/mt-tb.cgi/350