[But York's view was not shared by another tobacco critic.] I think they have a strong case, ... They have an appealing case; many of these hospitals are struggling. |
A ruling such as this really harks back to the days when snake-oil salesmen could make any outrageous product claim without fear of being held accountable. |
At this point, it's really open season on the industry, |
for big bucks, and these guys [the state attorneys general] are all running scared. It makes no sense. |
Given the fact that the public health community is being deliberately excluded, this certainly suggests the deal is very bad from a public health point of view. |
It means that when governmental restrictions on cigarette ads on a national basis do come into play, they'll clearly be constitutional, |
It'll be interesting to see |
Juries all around the country are sending a message that this conduct was not only totally inexcusable but that it was so outrageous, there is no amount of money that would be enough to punish the people who perpetrated it. |
Rather than seeking personal injury damages for the consequences of obesity, there will be lawsuits based on state consumer protection laws. There's a lot of deception in the marketplace and a lot of it is relevant to the obesity epidemic. But here we don't have to prove anyone got fat. |
The industry is clearly on the run, regardless of what happens in the punitive damage phase. |
These guys [the state attorneys general] have been persuaded to throw in the towel. |
This is the first of the big ones, |
We're teed up to do it, but we're waiting for the right time to bring this forward. |
While the executives played around with the notion of safer cigarettes, the lawyers in the company said, 'Listen, if you make a safer cigarette, you'll indict all the rest of our cigarettes' |
You can't get to a solution until you get a diagnosis. If you don't see the role of the junk food industry in causing the problem and in continuing to maintain the problem, you've missed a big part of the diagnosis. Things that dramatically assign blame, like a lawsuit, help people make a diagnosis. |