The Infamous Master Settlement Agreement
I have been trying very hard to truly understand this nefarious, utterly criminal mess of legalese, but I have come to the conclusion that it would take the lovechild of Niccolò Machiavelli and Lucrezia Borgia to truly understand all the details of it, and I am quite sure that its complexity and indecipherability is by design, to prevent those of ordinary education and intelligence from grasping just how pernicious it truly is. People who are NOT evil nearly always fail to grasp the magnitude of any true evil, and the various Attorneys General who crafted this vile farrago surely counted on that. But I will give it my best shot at explaining the basics of it, so that others can see just how corrupt our various governments truly are.
What I have managed to glean from my reading is that starting in the 1950s, in the wake of an article published in the British Medical Journal linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease, private individuals -- who clearly failed to grasp the concept of personal responsibility -- began suing various tobacco companies after the deaths of their loved ones; in the forty-odd years through 1994, over 800 private claims were brought against tobacco companies in state courts across the United States. The tobacco companies were successful against these lawsuits; only two plaintiffs ever prevailed, and both of those decisions were reversed on appeal, as the tobacco companies claimed contributory negligence* as the adverse health effects were previously unknown or lacked substantial credibility. In other words, the tobacco companies triumphed because eventually, judges grasped the concept of personal responsibility.
In the mid 1990s, this began to change, as more than 40 states commenced litigation against the tobacco industry, seeking monetary, equitable, and injunctive relief under various consumer-protection and antitrust laws. The general theory of these lawsuits was that the cigarettes produced by the tobacco industry contributed to health problems among the population, which in turn resulted in significant costs to the states' public health systems -- and right there, the evil deception begins: by the 1990s, enough was known about the hazards of smoking that most smokers tended to avoid seeking medical care for what they presumed to be the normal results of smoking, and given that smoking truly does tend to lead to severe and even fatal outcomes, most very-longterm smokers died before they could present much of a burden even to their own families, nevermind "public health systems."
Nevertheless, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore declared of his own lawsuit, "[The] lawsuit is premised on a simple notion: you caused the health crisis; you pay for it." -- as if the tobacco companies held guns to people's heads to force them to smoke!
The states alleged a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent practices by the tobacco companies over decades of sales. Other states soon followed. The state lawsuits sought recovery for Medicaid and other public health expenses supposedly incurred in the treatment of smoking-induced illnesses. Importantly, due to these lawsuits shifting the focus from punitive to financial losses allegedly incurred by "public health systems" solely because of smoking, the defenses of personal responsibility that were so effective for the tobacco industry in suits by private individuals were inapplicable to the causes of action alleged by the states.
The forces of Tobacco Control were already learning to shift the goalposts, not in order to secure justice, but to serve their own ends.
What I have managed to glean from my reading is that starting in the 1950s, in the wake of an article published in the British Medical Journal linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease, private individuals -- who clearly failed to grasp the concept of personal responsibility -- began suing various tobacco companies after the deaths of their loved ones; in the forty-odd years through 1994, over 800 private claims were brought against tobacco companies in state courts across the United States. The tobacco companies were successful against these lawsuits; only two plaintiffs ever prevailed, and both of those decisions were reversed on appeal, as the tobacco companies claimed contributory negligence* as the adverse health effects were previously unknown or lacked substantial credibility. In other words, the tobacco companies triumphed because eventually, judges grasped the concept of personal responsibility.
In the mid 1990s, this began to change, as more than 40 states commenced litigation against the tobacco industry, seeking monetary, equitable, and injunctive relief under various consumer-protection and antitrust laws. The general theory of these lawsuits was that the cigarettes produced by the tobacco industry contributed to health problems among the population, which in turn resulted in significant costs to the states' public health systems -- and right there, the evil deception begins: by the 1990s, enough was known about the hazards of smoking that most smokers tended to avoid seeking medical care for what they presumed to be the normal results of smoking, and given that smoking truly does tend to lead to severe and even fatal outcomes, most very-longterm smokers died before they could present much of a burden even to their own families, nevermind "public health systems."
Nevertheless, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore declared of his own lawsuit, "[The] lawsuit is premised on a simple notion: you caused the health crisis; you pay for it." -- as if the tobacco companies held guns to people's heads to force them to smoke!
The states alleged a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent practices by the tobacco companies over decades of sales. Other states soon followed. The state lawsuits sought recovery for Medicaid and other public health expenses supposedly incurred in the treatment of smoking-induced illnesses. Importantly, due to these lawsuits shifting the focus from punitive to financial losses allegedly incurred by "public health systems" solely because of smoking, the defenses of personal responsibility that were so effective for the tobacco industry in suits by private individuals were inapplicable to the causes of action alleged by the states.
The forces of Tobacco Control were already learning to shift the goalposts, not in order to secure justice, but to serve their own ends.
*a defense to a tort claim based on negligence. If it is available, this defense completely bars plaintiffs from any recovery if they contribute to their own injury through their own negligence.