Then, in 1999, a major win for plaintiffs occurred in a California court. The jury deciding the case, Henley v. Philip Morris, awarded $51.1 million in damages to the plaintiff who was suffering from inoperable lung cancer. It was the first case in over a decade to reach a California jury.
Big Tobacco Guilty As Charged. In a landmark 2006 judgment, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler found the major U.S. tobacco companies had violated civil racketeering laws (RICO) and engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to deceive the American public about the health effects of smoking and their marketing to children.
In 2006, the American Cancer Society and other plaintiffs won a major court case against Big Tobacco. Judge Gladys Kessler found tobacco companies guilty of lying to the American public about the deadly effects of cigarettes and secondhand smoke.
In Fiscal Year 2020, the most recent data available, states received $5.8 billion from the MSA and spent roughly 13% of it on anti-tobacco initiatives. That $656 million is barely one-fifth the amount that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the states spend.
On February 25th, 2015, a settlement was reached on behalf of more than 400 Florida smoker lawsuits against the major cigarette companies Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and Lorillard Tobacco Company.
$206 billion The largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history occurred in 1998 between the attorneys general of 46 states, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories, and the nation's four largest tobacco companies.
Wigand now is a lecturer, expert witness, and consultant on tobacco-related issues. He has been a consultant on cases and tobacco-related policies to governments of countries including Canada, the Netherlands, Scotland, Israel, Malta, Germany, France, Ireland, Iceland, and Japan.
Wigand is married to Hope Elizabeth May, an American philosopher, author and lawyer who is a professor at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, where he now resides.
TEXARKANA (April 14) – Twenty years ago, then-Texas Attorney General Dan Morales filed an historic federal lawsuit accusing the tobacco industry of racketeering and fraud.
The 1998 $206 billion settlement with the tobacco industry may offer lessons as government officials negotiate with the drug companies that manufacture opioids.
In the forty years through 1994, over 800 private claims were brought against tobacco companies in state courts across the country. The individuals asserted claims for negligent manufacture, negligent advertising, fraud, and violation of various state consumer protection statutes.
More than $156 billion in lost productivity, including $5.6 billion in lost productivity due to secondhand smoke exposure.