Word: philip
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...quit. He now has lung cancer, which has spread to his brain, back and lymph nodes; doctors give him less than a year to live. Who?s responsible for this sad state of affairs? According to a Los Angeles jury, his impending death can be blamed directly on Philip Morris, the manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes. The reason? Boeken says he believed the company's long-standing insistence that cigarettes are not addictive. And while juries had long been skeptical of individual claims against tobacco companies - why didn't they just quit? - they now seemed more inclined to place the blame...
...Wednesday, after a seven-week trial during which his lawyers alleged that Philip Morris intentionally glamorized smoking while downplaying its risks, Boeken was awarded $3 billion in punitive damages and $5.5 million in back pay and general damages. It is the largest award ever for an individual plaintiff. The plaintiff?s case was remarkable for its emotional appeal. Instead of leading the jury through a maze of sales charts and financial figures, Boeken?s team attacked the intentions of the tobacco giant, accusing it of a legacy of lies, deception and cold-hearted manipulation. The size of the award...
...This case saw Philip Morris attorneys adopt a new tack; they never denied the carcinogenic effects of tobacco and went so far as to admit their client "makes a dangerous product." Instead, they challenged the idea that PM is somehow responsible for an individual?s decision to smoke...
...Philip Morris brass was likewise struggling. "This verdict is outrageous and holds our legal system up to ridicule. It is the result of legal errors we believe will require reversal of this verdict," PM vice president and associate general council William Ohlemeyer said in a statement Wednesday. "The jury was given incorrect legal instructions, prevented from hearing important evidence and asked to believe that the plaintiff was only vaguely aware of the risks of smoking and the U.S. Surgeon General's warnings that have appeared on every pack of cigarettes Mr. Boeken smoked for more than 30 years." The company...
...Lynch and Coen pictures would make a fine set of bookends for your hardboiled fiction shelf. Both are set in the prime film-noir territory of sunny, sepulchral California: Los Angeles, home of Philip Marlowe (among other truth seekers) and moviemakers (among other chronic liars) for Mulholland Dr.; Santa Rosa (scene of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt) for the toxic scent of small-town failure in The Man Who Wasn't There. Both films serve up a lovely, lurid brew of greed, murder and twisted identities. But the Coen movie, with Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand locked...