why this trial? why now?
September 21, 2004 6:52 pm by kruegerI bet a lot of people are saying sure, the tobacco industry are lying scum, but why this trial? Why now?
Why this trial? Because it’s a federal case:
tobacco.neu.edu/litigatio…
Why now? I’d say because it took 10 years for this case to happen, starting with the discoveries made in the Brown and Williamson papers in 1994.
The tobacco industry began its campaign of deception in 1954:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fr…
40 years later, the Brown and Williamson papers opened up an incredible view of what the industry had done: “building an incredible wall between itself and the public, and running a completely separate reality inside and outside, and I think many millions of people have died as a result.” That’s how Stan Glantz put it.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fr…
The Department of Justice is putting it a little differently: this violates RICO.
But it’s one thing to say that, and quite another to assemble a winning RICO case. That takes time.
Especially against a defendant that’s highly experienced in litigation, extremely aggressive — and incredibly well financed. In fact, the tobacco industry has more money than the U.S. Government in this case. According the the LA Times, “with their army of top-flight corporate defenders, the tobacco companies have far outnumbered and clearly outspent the government”
www.no-smoking.org/sept04…
So that’s why now: it took 10 years to get this case to court. The things the industry did, have to be proved in court; that took time. The tobacco industry did everything it could to derail or delay the trial; that took more time. But now, finally, this trial is going forward. It should be interesting.