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Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Legal History > Item 133
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Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry
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by Dan Zegart
Sales Rank: 785956
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List Price: $19.00
$19.00
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on 6-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 368 pages
Published by: Delta December 4, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0385319363
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0385319362
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
Weighs: 14.2 ounces
Product Review
A rollicking tour behind the scenes of the tobacco wars, this captivating account reads like a true-crime thriller, complete with unforgettable characters and fast-paced drama. At the center of the action is Ron Motley, a handsome multimillionaire attorney who conducted class-action lawsuits in five states against cigarette makers. His thrill for the hunt is matched only by his monster ego and his use of outrageous metaphors, delivered in a South Carolina drawl. (His verdict for one particularly ineffective assistant: She's "as useless as tits on a bull.") There's the Philip Morris researcher who commits suicide by ingesting liquid nicotine, setting off a round of soul-searching among her fellow scientists; and there's "Deep Cough," code name for the manager at R.J. Reynolds who leaks information about the tobacco manufacturer's secret manipulation of nicotine to addict smokers. Sprinkled throughout are death threats, stolen documents, secret European laboratories, and wiretaps. Who would have thought that tobacco trial history and legislation could be so thrilling? Dan Zegart, who has written for Ms. and The Nation, spent five years traveling with Motley and his merry gang of supporters to deliver this colorful eyewitness account. The result is an impressive, convincing case against the tobacco industry that's straightforward and free of histrionics. If you enjoyed The Insider, the 1999 movie about a whistleblower at Brown & Williamson Tobacco, or followed the nasty internal battle at CBS over 60 Minutes's efforts to report the story, then you'll be overwhelmed by Civil Warriors. The Insider is but a chapter in this complex, comprehensive history. --Jodi Mailander Farrell
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
A freewheeling and engrossing history of tobacco litigation, Zegart's report highlights flamboyant South Carolina lawyer Ron Motley, who won $33 billion in judgments against tobacco companies between 1994 and 1999. Zegart, who has written articles for Ms. and the Nation, spent five years traveling with Motley as the irascible, heavy-drinking millionaire attorney prepared or conducted major class-action lawsuits in five states. The result is an eyewitness account of the siege of the tobacco industry waged by Motley, other high-rolling product-liability lawyers and various state attorney generals, who formed an effective counterforce against the hitherto impregnable citadel of tobacco. Full of great boardroom and courtroom drama, this well-researched book reads like a spy novel or an X-Files episode. Zegart goes deep inside the tobacco companies' research labs, where biomedical scientists knew by the 1960s how addictive and lethal nicotine is and how carcinogenic cigarettes are. He details secret experiments on human guinea pigs; tobacco company whistle-blowers who were fired, blackballed or sent death threats; a clandestine Big Tobacco fund that subsidized research projects that aimed to cast doubt on the deadliness of cigarettes; and Philip Morris's systematic purge of the respected scientists it had hired to make cigarettes safer (since such work proved the company knew its ordinary cigarettes were hazardous). Zegart's damning indictment of the industry's massive 40-year disinformation campaign is persuasive, though, as he notes, these lawsuits and the 1998 industrywide settlement have hardly made a dent in Big Tobacco's profitability or momentum. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry (Hardcover)
Readers will find this easy-to-read book more or less useful depending on the viewpoints and preparation they bring to it. I recommend it to everyone as a quick read that will fuel whatever side of the arguments the reader favors. The author focuses on litigators who tried to hold tobacco companies responsible for some of the harms from which the companies [and governments] have profited. Many of those litigators were flush with money derived from suits over asbestos or other faulty products, so this book features the swashbuckling lawyering familiar from the plaintiffs' attorney in A CIVIL ACTION. If the reader stereotypes lawyers as greedy parasites, that reader will find ample examples in this book. On the other hand, readers open to the idea that little folks sometimes get something resembling justice through lawsuits or not at all may regard the trial lawyers as the last hope for many underdogs -- not perfect by any means, but better than no champions at all. Some litigators were motivated by other values than money or in addition to money, so the reader whose mind has not been poisoned against all lawyers will find attorneys acting on principles or ideals. Readers unaware of the secrets and misbehavior of the tobacco companies should probably read about those companies in greater detail elsewhere, but this book provides a deft summary of intimidation, perjury, junk science, public relations, and other corporate viciousness. Readers who emphasize that Big Tobacco deals a legal drug that users are free to reject will find little sympathy for that view in this book, but they will find ample evidence of the misbehavior of critics of Big Tobacco. Readers who believe that plaintiffs file frivolous suits to shake down moneyed defendants every day will learn just how hard it is to get any money from economic powers. Readers who suspect that economic clout translates to legal and litigational prowess will find ways in which that is both true and false. Such readers will learn that black and white views do not adequately convey the complexity of economic powers. It is true that one ends this book without a tidy ending to this ongoing struggle. Even that, however, is an important lesson about tobacco politics.
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Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry
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