Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement PDF Author: Howard Coble
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 0788187651
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
What role, if any, should Congress should play in determining the amount of attorneys' fees to be recovered by outside counsel in the event that Congress enacts a nat. settlement of tobacco-related litigation. Witnesses: Lester Brickman, Prof., Benjamin Cardozo School of Law; Jeffrey Harris, Assoc. Prof. of Economics, MIT; Michael Moore, Attorney General, Mississippi; Alan Morrison, Staff Attorney, Public Citizen; Joseph Rice, Ness, Motley, Loadholt Richardson and Poole; Richard Scruggs, Scruggs, Millette, Lawson, Bozeman and Dent; D. Scott Wise, Davis Polk and Wardwell, on behalf of the Tobacco Industry; and C. Steven Yerrid, Yerrid, Knopik and Mudano.

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement PDF Author: Howard Coble
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 0788187651
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
What role, if any, should Congress should play in determining the amount of attorneys' fees to be recovered by outside counsel in the event that Congress enacts a nat. settlement of tobacco-related litigation. Witnesses: Lester Brickman, Prof., Benjamin Cardozo School of Law; Jeffrey Harris, Assoc. Prof. of Economics, MIT; Michael Moore, Attorney General, Mississippi; Alan Morrison, Staff Attorney, Public Citizen; Joseph Rice, Ness, Motley, Loadholt Richardson and Poole; Richard Scruggs, Scruggs, Millette, Lawson, Bozeman and Dent; D. Scott Wise, Davis Polk and Wardwell, on behalf of the Tobacco Industry; and C. Steven Yerrid, Yerrid, Knopik and Mudano.

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description


Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement

Attorneys' Fees and the Tobacco Settlement PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description


Cornered

Cornered PDF Author: Peter Pringle
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 080504292X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
It Began in New Orleans with the lung-cancer death of a small-time lawyer. It began in Kentucky when a $9-an-hour law clerk stole three boxes of incriminating company documents. It began in Mississippi as an outraged country lawyer discovered the costs of cancer care. And it began in Washington as a pediatrician-turned-agency head decided to end tobacco's 90-year immunity from regulation. Suddenly, an untouchable industry was under siege. And in the vanguard of the attack: a consortium of the nation's toughest liability lawyers led by the best friend of that small-time New Orleans attorney. Three years and 33 million documents later, Big Tobacco had been cornered. Though the $369 billion they have offered to buy peace has been attacked as "too little, too late", it represents a capitulation of monumental proportions."Cornered" is the first full account of this unprecedented battle. Dramatic, funny, enraging, it offers the ultimate proof that you can fight city hall.

Up in Smoke

Up in Smoke PDF Author: Martha Derthick
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In a landmark report by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1964, the government warned its citizens of the adverse effects of smoking on their health and took a series of steps to discourage smoking. These steps stemmed from “ordinary politics” –that is, actions taken or authorized by legislatures. 1994 heralded a new era in tobacco politics: of “adversarial legalism,” wherein state attorneys general sued leading cigarette manufacturers for the harm they had done to public health. These law-suits culminated in the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) that directed an estimated $250 billion to state governments over the next 25 years and imposed new marketing and advertising restrictions. In her second edition, Martha Derthick introduces new evidence from 5 years of experience under the MSA to show that the states were more interested in raising revenue than in improving tobacco control, that the enrichment of wealthy tort lawyers violated the legal profession's ethics, and that the agreement, ironically, spawned the rise of small, upstart cigarette manufacturers able to undersell the major companies. In this clearly written, fast-paced case study, Derthick concludes that the tobacco lawsuits not only produced flawed public policy that flouted the American system of checks and balances, but has done little to improve or better safeguard public health.

Legal Strategies in Childhood Obesity Prevention

Legal Strategies in Childhood Obesity Prevention PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309210224
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Since 1980, childhood obesity rates have more than tripled in the United States. Recent data show that almost one-third of children over 2 years of age are already overweight or obese. While the prevalence of childhood obesity appears to have plateaued in recent years, the magnitude of the problem remains unsustainably high and represents an enormous public health concern. All options for addressing the childhood obesity epidemic must therefore be explored. In the United States, legal approaches have successfully reduced other threats to public health, such as the lack of passive restraints in automobiles and the use of tobacco. The question then arises of whether laws, regulations, and litigation can likewise be used to change practices and policies that contribute to obesity. On October 21, 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) held a workshop to bring together stakeholders to discuss the current and future legal strategies aimed at combating childhood obesity. Legal Strategies in Childhood Obesity Prevention summarizes the proceedings of that workshop. The report examines the challenges involved in implementing public health initiatives by using legal strategies to elicit change. It also discusses circumstances in which legal strategies are needed and effective. This workshop was created only to explore the boundaries of potential legal approaches to address childhood obesity, and therefore, does not contain recommendations for the use of such approaches.

Smoking and Health

Smoking and Health PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Smoking
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description


Smoke-Filled Rooms

Smoke-Filled Rooms PDF Author: W. Kip Viscusi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226857484
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The 1998 out-of-court settlements of litigation by the states against the cigarette industry totaled $243 billion, making it the largest payoff ever in our civil justice system. Two key questions drove the lawsuits and the attendant settlement: Do smokers understand the risks of smoking? And does smoking impose net financial costs on the states? With Smoke-Filled Rooms,W. Kip Viscusi provides unexpected answers to these questions, drawing on an impressive range of data on several topics central to the smoking policy debate. Based on surveys of smokers in the United States and Spain, for instance, he demonstrates that smokers actually overestimate the dangers of smoking, indicating that they are well aware of the risks involved in their choice to smoke. And while smoking does increase medical costs to the states, Viscusi finds that these costs are more than financially balanced by the premature mortality of smokers, which reduces their demands on state pension and health programs, so that, on average, smoking either pays for itself or generates revenues for the states. Viscusi's eye-opening assessment of the tobacco lawsuits also includes policy recommendations that could frame these debates in a more productive way, such as his suggestion that the FDA should develop a rating system for cigarettes and other tobacco products based on their relative safety, thus providing an incentive for tobacco manufacturers to compete among themselves to produce safer cigarettes. Viscusi's hard look at the facts of smoking and its costs runs against conventional thinking. But it is also necessary for an informed and realistic debate about the legal, financial, and social consequences of the tobacco lawsuits. People making $50,000 or more pay .08 percent of their income in cigarette taxes, but people with incomes of less than $10,000 pay 1.62 percenttwenty times as much. The maintenance crew at the Capitol will bear more of the "sin tax" levied on cigarettes than will members of Congress who voted to boost it. Cigarettes are not a financial drain to the U.S. In fact, they are self-financing, as a consequence of smokers' premature mortality. The general public estimates that 47 out of 100 smokers will die from lung cancer because they smoke. Smokers believe that 40 out of 100 will die of the disease. Scientists estimate the actual number of 100 smokers who will die from lung cancer to be between 7 and 13.

The Rule of Lawyers

The Rule of Lawyers PDF Author: Walter K. Olson
Publisher: Truman Talley Books
ISBN: 1429979089
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Big-ticket litigation is a way of life in this country. But something new is afoot--something typified by the $246 billion tobacco settlement, and by courtroom assaults that have followed against industries ranging from HMOs to gunmakers, from lead paint manufacturers to "factory farms." Each massive class-action suit seeks to invent new law, to ban or tax or regulate something that elected lawmakers had chosen to leave alone. And each time the new process works as intended, the new litigation elite reaps billions in fees--which they invest in fresh rounds of suits, as well as political contributions. The Rule of Lawyers asks: Who picks these lawyers, and who can fire them? Who protects the public's interest when settlements are negotiated behind closed doors? Where are our elected lawmakers in all this? The answers may determine whether we slip from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers.

Tobacco War

Tobacco War PDF Author: Stanton A. Glantz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520924681
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Tobacco War charts the dramatic and complex history of tobacco politics in California over the past quarter century. Beginning with the activities of a small band of activists who, in the 1970s, put forward the radical notion that people should not have to breathe second-hand tobacco smoke, Stanton Glantz and Edith Balbach follow the movement through the 1980s, when activists created hundreds of city and county ordinances by working through their local officials, to the present--when tobacco is a highly visible issue in American politics and smoke-free restaurants and bars are a reality throughout the state. The authors show how these accomplishments rest on the groundwork laid over the past two decades by tobacco control activists who have worked across the U.S. to change how people view the tobacco industry and its behavior. Tobacco War is accessibly written, balanced, and meticulously researched. The California experience provides a graphic demonstration of the successes and failures of both the tobacco industry and public health forces. It shows how public health advocates slowly learned to control the terms of the debate and how they discovered that simply establishing tobacco control programs was not enough, that constant vigilance was necessary to protect programs from a hostile legislature and governor. In the end, the California experience proves that it is possible to dramatically change how people think about tobacco and the tobacco industry and to rapidly reduce tobacco consumption. But California's experience also demonstrates that it is possible to run such programs successfully only as long as the public health community exerts power effectively. With legal settlements bringing big dollars to tobacco control programs in every state, this book is must reading for anyone interested in battling and beating the tobacco industry.