You have to hand it to the tobacco industry. It's a sector that's making money selling goods that make people sick and die so it's not surprising they have no standards of ethics.
All of that comes out in a new case involving Lorillard Tobacco which tried to entice black children to become smokers in the 1950s by handing out free cigarettes. A court has awarded $71 million in compensatory damages to the estate and son of a woman who died of lung cancer.
Willie Evans alleged Lorillard introduced his mother, Marie Evans, to smoking as a child in the late 1950s by giving her free Newport cigarettes at the Boston housing project where she lived. He said his mother smoked for more than 40 years before dying of lung cancer at the relatively young age of 54.
This is an unusual verdict. True, tobacco companies' past marketing practices have been criticized by government agencies and court rulings but when you read the cases coming up before the courts, jurors always seem typically reluctant to side with smokers who bring lawsuits against the companies. Jurors usually want to hold the smoker partly responsible, saying no one forced them to start smoking.
But this verdict suggests the ground might be shifting and if it is, we can expect the tobacco merchants to be hit with more litigation.
no comment untill now