I was a guest this afternoon on Paul Harris’s radio show on KMOX, St. Louis. We discussed Judge Weinstein’s ruling certifying a national class action over “light” tobacco claims (see PoL Sept. 25), the court decision last week keeping alive the Pelman obesity case against McDonald’s (Sept. 22), and a deaf group’s lawsuit demanding captioning at Washington Redskins football games (Sept. 21). You can listen here — it’s practically a podcast.
Posts Tagged ‘tobacco’
Latest “nicotine-spiking” panic
Well debunked by Jack Shafer (“Press box: Nicotine madness”, Slate, Sept. 1).
But where are the customers’ Lamborghinis?
Houston plaintiff’s lawyer John O’Quinn, famed for his huge fee hauls in asbestos, tobacco and silicone breast implant cases, was the winning bidder at $500,000 at a Labor Day auction of a Lamborghini race car signed by celebrities. O’Quinn “also spent $335,000 on a Batmobile used in the film ‘Batman Forever.’ His other purchases at the auction included $250,000 for a 1938 Cadillac Town Car used by Pope Pius XII and $290,000 for a 1941 Packard limousine used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.” (AP/Houston Chronicle, Sept. 5; Houstonist, Sept. 5)(title allusion).
Paternalism and Your Money — Part One
President Bush has signed H.R. 4, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, into law.
The bill is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will be “saved,” even though we were repeatedly assured until now that there was in fact nothing to “save” it from. Private employers will be required, over time, to go from 90% funding to 100% funding of their pension plans — which is nothing more than hollow accounting gimmickry. And the real volcanoes under the city — public employee pensions — are not addressed at all. Neither of course is the Social Security crisis.
But one afterthought of the bill is worth looking at:
Employers can encourage their workers to save by automatically enrolling them 401(k) retirement accounts.
This proposal has been bouncing around for years. A good primer on the subject is available from the Congressional Research Service.
Big news day
Looking for commentary on recent developments in tobacco, Vioxx, or Katrina cases? Check our sister site, Point of Law, for extensive detailed discussion on all three, as well as Will Wilson on the perils of fifty state attorneys general negotiating Medicare fraud claims, information missing from the Wall Street Journal’s punitive damages debate, Michigan’s ban on asbestos bundled settlements, ABC’s John Stossel on the plaintiffs’ bar, and much, much more.
Federal tobacco suit ruling
As Ted notes at Point of Law, Judge Gladys Kessler has ruled in partial favor of the federal government in its longstanding racketeering case against the tobacco industry (Jun. 21, 2005 and links from there), begun under the Clinton Administration (after much backstage string-pulling and blandishment by private plaintiff’s lawyers) and continued by the Bush Administration. In particular, Judge Kessler is ordering the tobacco companies to make admissions of fraud and racketeering that may prove damaging to them in future private litigation (you can see why those private lawyers were smart to lobby). She did, however, at various stages throw out or disallow large portions of the government’s case, including most of its sweeping demands for money.
A few preliminary comments, based on a reading of the shorter remedial section but not the 1,653-page ruling (PDF) itself:
1) It is now familiar, if still a scandal, that business decisions which would have been near-universally regarded as perfectly lawful at the time can retroactively be defined not only as giving rise to liability, but even as “racketeering”. By this point, with the “racketeering” label having been flung around (and sometimes with success) in so many garden-variety commercial disputes, it may be on the verge of losing its sting.
2) This case, however, was not of the garden variety. From the start, it sought to stigmatize as racketeering tobacco companies’ public advocacy efforts — their efforts to defend their product in public debate and marshal every good and bad argument on its behalf the same way a lawyer might, their P.R. efforts to plant favorable articles in the press, their support of groups like the Tobacco Institute, and so forth. The Justice Department’s complaint charges them, revealingly, with responsibility for taking “false and misleading positions on issues” (emphasis added) (see Sept. 23, 1999). It should be obvious (but apparently still isn’t) that lots and lots of other defendants, who are not for the moment as politically unpopular as tobacco companies, might also someday be in peril of legal charges for advancing false and misleading “positions on issues”.
3) Although Judge Kessler may have thrown out substantial portions of the feds’ case, the remedies she approved nonetheless impinge on values of free advocacy. Tobacco companies are to be ordered to admit in communications to consumers various supposed facts which they do not believe to be true, and which in fact may not be true (for example, that no particular formula for a cigarette’s ingredients is safer or more natural than any other) but which fit the desired anti-tobacco message. They are to be forbidden to utter a great many other statements which they believe to be true on the grounds that — well, basically on the grounds that the government disapproves of those statements and doesn’t want them aired as part of public debate.
4) It goes without saying that the advancement of erroneous or misleading arguments, the promotion of dubious science, etc. as part of an effort to sell one’s product line is not going to be deemed “racketeering” when certain other groups of professionals do it — say, politicians and lawyers.
On Bloomberg’s “Beneficence”
Walter beat me to the punch regarding the announcement that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to donate contribute up to $125 million to anti-smoking efforts.
Why the strikethrough?
His effort will include cash for programs that help smokers quit and educate children to prevent them from starting; funds to push for smoking bans and higher tobacco taxes in other cities, states and countries; and money for a system to track global tobacco use and the effectiveness of anti-smoking efforts.
Excuse me, but that’s not “charitable giving.” That’s lobbying.
And I would hope that this portion of Bloomberg’s “benevolence” is therefore appropriately regulated, registered, disclosed, limited, taxed, McCain-Feingolded and generally treated the same way as anyone else’s attempt to buy a law under our current schizophrenic political funding system.
My previous thoughts on campaign finance reform here. A related thread on the abuse of tax exemption by politically active religious leaders and institutions here.
Bloomberg’s anti-smoking philanthropy
Gotham’s nurse-mayor has donated $125 million from his personal fortune “to track smoking across the globe and to push for the same kind of smoking bans and cigarette tax hikes that the mayor has implemented in New York since taking office in 2002”. New York Sun reporter Jill Gardiner quotes me in reaction (“Bloomberg Gives $125 Million Gift To Fight Smoking”, Aug. 16).
“Something which I would consider akin to child abuse”
For California state senator Deborah Ortiz, that would describe smoking in a car in which a child is present. Writes Brooke Oberwetter at CEI Open Market (Jun. 29): “According to the Contra Costa Times, smokers can be fined under [a bill approved by the committee Ortiz chairs] even if the car is parked and on private property. Clearly California is just a cigarette’s flick away from suggesting banning smoking in private homes: If they can tell you what you can and cannot do in the driveway, is there really much left in terms of precedent to stop them from stepping gingerly up to the front porch and peering in the windows?” A similar bill has already passed the California assembly. (Edwin Garcia, “Bill targets smokers with children”, Contra Costa Times, Jun. 29; Michael Siegel, Jun. 29). Earlier coverage: May 1 and links from there. On the follies of GOP governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who promoted a similar measure in that state, see The Agitator, Jun. 9.
Fla. high court nixes Engle
The Florida Supreme Court has backed an appeals court’s dismissal of the absurd $145 billion verdict against cigarette makers in the Engle case. The court’s opinion is split in complicated ways, but the defeat for attorney Stanley Rosenblatt is unmistakable. (Daniel Pimlott, “$145bn award against tobacco giants goes up in smoke”, Financial Times/MSNBC, Jul. 6). The opinion is here (PDF)(via Bashman). I’ve written extensively about the Engle case at earlier stages, including op-eds for the Wall Street Journal Jul. 12, 1999, Jul. 18, 2000 and May 23, 2003. Much more background here.