Word: settlements
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...have to be a Floridian to find instructive contrasts to the proposed tobacco settlement. In Oklahoma earlier this year, a 38-year-old father of three was sentenced to 93 years for growing marijuana in his basement. (That's 70 years for possession alone.) Which suggests that the best strategy for legalizing marijuana might be to criminalize tobacco--and then just wait for the sentences for possession of smokable substances to drop, say, from 93 years in prison to 10 minutes of community service...
...fair, there are some big differences between the stop-sign case and the tobacco settlement. Smokers know they're risking their life and their health; it says so on the cigarette pack, right near "tasteful/low tar" or some similarly enticing inscription. In contrast, the three teens killed at the intersection didn't have a clue about the missing sign. No one has ever declared a willingness to "walk a mile" to go through an unmarked intersection or congratulated herself for having "come a long way" when she got to one. But to continue in the vein of fairness...
...lesson from these cases, as well as from the tobacco settlement, is that that mysterious masked entity known as a corporation is in fact an ingenious device for collectivizing responsibility. Even when a corporation is found guilty, no actual individual need take the fall. But if the defense lawyer for a mere biological person attempts a similar diffusion of blame--by, for example, pointing out the defendant's history of abuse as a child, or the fact that several upstanding citizens had noticed the missing stop sign and failed to report it--said lawyer can expect these days...
...responsible for the suspected deletions. Neither Okula nor Lundwall's attorney, Ethan Levin-Epstein, would comment on which portions of the tape may have been tampered with. After the tapes were made public last year, Texaco settled a race discrimination case for a record $176 million, the largest settlement of its kind in U.S. history, and subjected itself to workplace monitoring for racial sensitivity. Lundwall and former Texaco treasurer Robert Ulrich were charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Both have pleaded innocent to the charges...
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Former FDA head David Kessler went to the White House today to press his recommendation the Administration reject the $368.5 billion settlement between Big Tobacco and the state attorneys general because the deal would limit the government's power to regulate nicotine as an addictive drug. A Congressional commission headed by Kessler and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, which had indicated its serious misgivings about the settlement two weeks ago, presented Al Gore with its recommendations for making the deal work. Especially upsetting to the Koop-Kessler commission is a provision forbidding a nicotine...