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Why the deterioration in Big Tobacco's courtroom track record? "It's the documents, stupid," quips Chuck Tauman, the Oregon plaintiffs' attorney who has scored two recent multimillion-dollar verdicts against Philip Morris. . .
A fervent antitobacco subculture has sprung up to mine the new cache of depositions, trial testimony, and other documents, benefiting not only plaintiffs' lawyers but the public-health community. The Web's largest tobacco database, Tobacco Documents Online (www.tobaccodocuments.org), is funded by institutions that get money from the National Cancer Institute, such as the Mayo Clinic. "It's heaven," says Ray Goldstein, a San Francisco paralegal who has set up his own business specializing in smokers' suits. (His slogan: "Bad News for Big Tobacco.") The American Lung Association of Colorado regularly alerts more than 1,300 people and institutions, including plaintiffs' lawyers, via E-mail to the content of the ongoing uploads the tobacco firms are required to make until June 30, 2010. . .
Antitobacco advertising by public-health organizations also molds the views of today's jurors. . .
"The clear message for us in the verdicts is that jurors want significant change in how the industry operates going forward," says Michael Pfeil, a vice president at Philip Morris U.S.A. The company, which also wants a clear legal path before it starts marketing new "reduced risk" cigarettes, recently revved up a lobbying campaign to press the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. Philip Morris isn't pushing Congress for immunity from lawsuits, however. Attempts to put a cap on punitive damages doomed a congressional attempt to pass tobacco control legislation in 1998. . .
But the prospect of a steady drumbeat of bad litigation news is daunting. At least 25 smokers' trials are scheduled to start between now and mid-2003, and the industry also faces numerous class actions and a 1999 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice aimed at recovering the government's costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses.
For its part, R. J. Reynolds remains defiant.
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