Tobacco Litigation :: essays research papers

THE BATTLE OF manganeseDocument Discovery In The1997 Minnesota Tobacco Litigation. I. admissionAlthough any legal observer would tell you the prospect long loomed on the horizon, on July 14, 2000, when a Florida jury handed down a concept of $144.8 billion dollars against the seven major baccy companies , the mental shock of hear such a figure was still staggering. It stiff unclear as of this writing exactly how much of this massive verdict will ever be collected by the plaintiffs - a behemoth class of Florida smokers - injure by the products marketed, manufactured and sold by the defendants. In the days this instant following the judgement, the tobacco industry carried on business as inveterate and even the companies stock prices remained largely unchanged . Irrespective of the minimal present(prenominal) financial and social effects of this supposition, the legal implications for the tobacco industry, the plaintiffs bar, and the state and federal government entities pres ently bringing suit for tobacco related harms, cannot be overemphasized. The Florida judgment, the largest in civil legal history, although unique in its outcome, was only one more chapter in the long and still florescence saga of American tobacco judicial proceeding. After many years of success wide of the marky fleck illimitable wars in the arna of civil mass torts, Goliath had fallen, and although he was far from dead, he could no longer afford to laugh at the prospect of the battle before him. The husband and wife legal aggroup of Stanley and Irene Rosenblatt had successfully felled an opponent that, less than a decade earlier, had toppled even the beat out and brightest of the plaintiffs bar. The Florida plaintiffs arsenal, however, was filled with the unique and powerful ammunition of countless confidential documents passed between the defendants employees, and even their legal counsel. Without a slingshot full of these stones, Goliath was unlikely to have fallen, and th e manner, and legal justification for how they were introduced into evidence remains a controversy of great legal significance. For even now, as the unimaginative and legal ramifications of the Florida case and judgment remain unclear, many legal scholars are still busy debating the outcome of a prior legal battle, without which the Florida judgment never could have occurred the battle of Minnesota. II. Tobacco Litigation - A report of The Three WavesA. The First Wave (1950 - 1980)For ease of reference, the history of tobacco litigation is usually summarized into three waves.