The People Vs. Big Tobacco: How the States Took on the Cigarette Giants

Memphis, Tennessee, 1993. Attorney Michael Lewis looks into the emaciated face of his friend, a lifelong smoker dying of cancer, and resolves that something has to change -- Big Tobacco must be held accountable for the human and financial wreckage their products leave behind.

Four years later, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore stands at his microphone in the ballroom of the ANA Hotel in Washington, DC, and announces to the nation that Big Tobacco has just conceded the most gigantic legal settlement in the history of the world -- $368.5 billion. As Moore outlines the points of the plan, it is clear that America's relationship with tobacco is about to be transformed forever. Sweeping changes in the regulation and marketing of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are about to take place; the companies will pay heavily for their lies, denials, and evasions. Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man will never again woo another teenager...

For the first time, the facts behind the scorching of Big Tobacco are woven into a single investigative narrative. Written in the fast-paced, riveting style of A Civil Action by a reporting team positioned -- from the beginning -- inside the frame with key players from all sides of the legal battleground, The People vs. Big Tobacco lets readers become insiders themselves in one of the most amazing social and financial dramas of our century.

After nimbly sidestepping any and all lawsuits for more than four decades, the tobacco industry received what could prove to be a mortal blow when Merrell Williams, a Louisville paralegal, stole thousands of pages of confidential documents from the law firm where he worked and handed them over to Michael Moore, the attorney general of Mississippi. These confidential documents proved that the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, a client of the firm, knew the dangers associated with smoking cigarettes, and that they had lied repeatedly to the public about the risks. Once these documents were released via the Internet and numerous anonymous mailings, the blood was in the water. A coalition of 65 top American trial lawyers attacked the tobacco industry from one side, while Moore and 39 other states' attorneys general pounced from the other, eventually resulting in a $368 billion settlement--the largest in American history. The People Vs. Big Tobacco: How the States Took on the Cigarette Giants is a blow-by-blow account of how the "Mother of All Lawsuits" was eventually settled, who the major players were, and what the settlement actually means for the future of Big Tobacco. The lawsuit settlement has since been railed by many health organizations and policymakers as a sellout, but there is no doubt that the tobacco industry has been permanently altered. Though more big-league legal wrangling is sure to come, The People Vs. Big Tobacco is an excellent analysis of the battle as it currently stands.