The axe manufacturers come out with a really great new product: the Titanium Axe 9000[sub]TM[/sub].
“But what’s it used for?” the public wonders.
“It’s a personal face massager!” they say triumphantly.
Most of the public stares at them with lowered faces as if to say “whachoo talkin’ 'bout, axe people?”
And the manufacturers respond “We’ve had scientists work for tens of thousands of hours to develop and test this product. I can state conclusively that no permanent harm will come to you if you hit yourself repeatedly with the Titanium Axe 9000[sub]TM[/sub].”
Cut to three weeks later in Boise Idaho where Big Earl has gathered his friends around his garage.
“Guess what I just got today?” Big Earl asks.
"Hey, is it the new tractor pull magazine?” Ray asks.
“A new car! A new car! What’s behind the garage Big Earl? What is it? What?” Fred asks excitedly.
“Some…uh…sexy…langrenie for yer wife?” Billy Bob murmurs.
“You’re all wrong!” Big Earl says smiling. “I got myself the brand new Titanium Axe 9000[sub]TM[/sub] personal face massager!” he says pulling it out.
They all stare at him incredulously. Even Billy Bob.
“Haven’t you seen all those reports on the TV and in the newspapers?” Ray says. “They say there’s a 95% chance that thing will kill you.”
“Those people are being paid off by the anti-axe lobby. You can’t trust them.”
“Oooh ooooh! I heard about my cousin who has a friend and he used the Titanium Axe 9000[sub]TM[/sub] and it damn near ripped his throat out, I tell you!” Fred screamed
“That’s an unfounded rumor. You can’t trust those.”
“What about them there warnin’ labels they gots on the handle?” Billy Bob said.
“What? ‘May cause severe skin irritation.’? They’re talking about rashes and maybe a blister. I’ll be fine.”
“Excuse me. Did you happen to notice how sharp the axe blade is? Or, you know, take physics in high school?” Ray asked.
“Yeah, man. Yeah! That looks really sharp. I dunno if I’d smash that against my face or anything.” Fred added.
“You got a purty mouth.” Billy Bob said.
“Look, you’re all just jealous of me and my Titanium Axe 9000[sub]TM[/sub] personal massager. It says on the box that it’s a ‘great muscle relaxer that employs the subtle nuances of the ancient art of acupuncture and Shiatsu with the modern application of Sports therapy used by all professional athletes across the country.’ So you’re all clearly wrong. Besides, these big manufacturers wouldn’t want to kill me. Where would they find another customer? So just leave me alone and let me enjoy it.”
Anyone want to place odds on Big Earl suing the axe manufacturer?
-Ender
An asthmatic who enjoys the occasional cigar
I am also looking for a link about the woman from Florida who died in her forties from lung cancer some years ago, whose family brought suit against the tobacco companies. She was a few years younger than my mother, who would have been 70 this year had she not died in 1991 of lung cancer before reaching her sixtieth birthday. She was smoking long before there were warnings on the packages. My family did not choose to bring a wrongful death suit against the tobacco companies. My dad still draws a skull and crossbones across any magazine cigarette ads he finds in medical waiting rooms.
I work part-time as a Resident Assistant in a half-way house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, most of whom also smoke. Of all the drugs that these people are addictive to, it seems to me that cannibus does the least damage. Yet alcohol and cigarettes, which do terrible damage to the addict, are legal.
One of the main things that the program tries to teach addicts is personal responsibility, and righting the wrongs they did during the using phase of their addiction. I would say that frivolous lawsuits like the one mentioned in spooje’s OP mean that man needs to find a twelve-step program and stop blaming his problems on others.
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But that’s not the whole point. Check here, for example, and you’ll see that simply “seeing the light” at some point does not change the fact that the damage may already be done, even if will power were not an issue at all.
And, again, I would assert that if the “choice” being made is made by teenagers, than the whole “it’s their own fault they’re not as strong as the rest of us” smugness does not hold up (Spider Woman, thanks for the link). It is incumbent upon the company selling the dangerous product to make sure that it can’t be abused by those the rest of us feel deserve special protection–children. That the tobacco companies actually targeted this group of people in recognition of its profitability (and that the market would virtually dry up over time without this group) was more than irresponsible–it was evil. McMurphy (and others), please address this point if you think it’s weak, but don’t ignore it.
I would suggest to a few of the posters here that if you are the enthusiastic advocates of personal responsibility you seem to be, your feelings ought to apply to cigarette companies executives as well. We might wish otherwise, but life is not filled with black-and-white problems that have only one person responsible. Sometimes there is legitimate reason to pass some of the blame around.
Wrong again, I’m afraid. Here’s the definition of fraud. The relevant bit is highlighted:
If you don’t believe a lie, you aren’t reasonably relying on it. Ispo facto, no fraud. Thus, tobacco plaintiffs lie through their fucking teeth on the witness stand and commit perjury in claiming they never had the slightest idea that tobacco might be harmful. And yes, they’re all liars. Every single one of them.
Actually, what the bar will do is turn the matter over to its insurance carrier and have them file a legal defense. Defense against lawsuits is what one pays insurance for. The bar’s insurance premiums are a sunk cost, that is, an amount that it had already spent before the lawsuit arose. And those insurance companies - and their lawyers - don’t let go of so much as a nickel in settlement anymore if they can help it.
Thanks for the link Bob, but did the defendants in this particular case quit smoking once they heard it was dangerous? I don’t think they did. If they had and the damage had been incurred during a period of genuine ignorance then they would have had far more of a case than they came to court with. I don’t think there is any way to prove that the serious damage was done during their teenage years as they didn’t give up smoking when the facts came to light. Despite the amount of genetic alterations there isn’t any way of knowing when the point of no return was passed. [devils advocate mode - ON]
Regarding the teenagers some might say it was evil, others might say it was good business. You could make a similar argument about fashion magazines heading every magazine cover with a gorgeous model with 20 top tips to look like her and get the man of your dreams. Whilst it’s profitable the end result, for some kids, is anorexia. Is it evil?* [D.A.M. - off]
I personally consider it to be utterly reprehensible that the cogarette companies would do that but cigarette companies ARE reprehensible. They deal in death and they know it. The fact is we know it as well. In this particular instance the point about the plaintiffs incurring damage whilst genuinely ignorant is moot because they didn’t stop when they found out the dangers. For all we know they didn’t incur any damage at all during their teenage years.
I don’t want to seem like I’m sticking up for the cigarette companies but I wouldn’t ever dream to blame them for my actions. It wouldn’t matter whether I started smoking when I was twelve or twenty. The warning on the packet would be enough for me.
**
No, but even following your logic, that wouldn’t absolve the tobacco companies of their liability. It would simply mean they had less culpability in instances where the smoker kept smoking despite becoming aware of the danger and/or becoming an adult.
Do you agree that if tobacco companies knowingly marketed a dangerous product relying either upon people’s ignorance or upon a teenage market that they were wrong? The fact that some continued to smoke, even if we buy your notion that the danger itself should be reason enough for anyone of normal resolve to quit, would not take away the guilt, it might simply diminish it. Why would we assume that the major damage occurred completely after the danger was known?
Yes, it’s evil if the magazine knowingly follows a strategy that will damage children so that the mag can make $$$.
Again, why would we assume that the damage occurred after the teenage years? If you let the tobacco companies completely off the hook, that is effectively what you’re doing. Remember, the question we’re discussing here is not whether to absolve all smokers of any personal responsibility. The question is whether the tobacco companies deserve any portion of the blame, at least in some instances. Given no other information, why wouldn’t we assume that the entire span of smoking contributed to the damage?
We’ll have to disagree on this one, regardless of how mature a kid you were. If you started smoking when you were twelve, I would hold the tobacco companies at least partially responsible, for all the reasons previously noted. If you first smoked as an adult, after all the warnings came out, you’re on your own and aren’t allowed to bitch.
Whether a particular person has been defrauded depends upon whether that person believes the lie they have been told. You say everyone knew the tobacco companies were lying. I say that some people did. I don’t know of anything that everyone beleives.
I would submit that the evidence presented by the tobacco companies, false though it was, was enough to convince some people who wanted to believe it. It is unreasonable to think that nobody believed the lies.
I beleive in individual responsibility. It is stupid to start smoking. But I also think that the tobacco companies should take some measure of responsibility for the harm that their product caused, and continues to cause.
As for marketing to teens, here’s a sample of what the tobacco companies themselves have to say on the subject.
How so? I mean, how would an individual come into contact with the lies of Big Tobacco, other than simply seeing the products on the shelves?
They may have seen the testimony before Congress on C-Span? They may read published reports in magazines that may have twisted and misrepresented actual scientific data? They may read reports from ‘tobacco’ scientists that said cigarette smoking was not dangerous? They may well have.
But, and lets put that in bold here, but, anyone who watched enough TV and read enough magazines to actually hear these lies firsthand would have also seen 10 times more reports that smoking was actually very dangerous. They would have heard on the TV news that smoking had been linked to this disease and that. They would have seen the ad’s where Brooke Sheilds said smoking was icky! They would have been told smoking was bad by people who had no product to sell. And they would have heard it from more reputable and credible sources.
They may heard the lies, but they heard a lot more truth. But the truth meant that they would have to give up something that they enjoyed. So they chose to disregard the truth. They chose to believe that that the negative health effects would not happen to them. Even when they hacked and coughed in the morning(hey, there’s a clue for ya), even when they wheezed, even when they and everybody else playfully referred to cigarettes as ‘cancer sticks’ and ‘coffin nails’, they disregarded the truth they heard. IMHO. it is a travesty to use ‘I didn’t know it was dangerous’ as an excuse.
BTW, about addiction. There is no one on the planet, not even one person, with less willpower than spooje. And I quit a three and a half pack a day habit. And I quit a narcotic habit. Don’t ever tell me it can’t be done. I know it can.
spooje, and that still wouldn’t change the fact that the damage might already have been done and, if you’re the typical consumer, that damage began when you were a teenager–this is not a trivial aspect of the argument-- and continued while you earnestly struggled (for a protracted period) to quit without success.
So, yes, it would be silly for anyone to say they were completely unaware for the past 30 years that cigarettes were dangerous. It would NOT be silly to state that the tobacco companies contributed to the harm that many people experienced, even when those people continued to smoke.
I’m not understanding the ‘damage already done’ part of your argument. The chowderheads who sue the tobacco companies have all smoked for decades. Now a teenager may start smoking in his intellectually deficient years. He may arrive at the conlclusion that smoking is bad in his early twenties when he is fully expected to know better. He quits. What damage has been done that at this point cannot be corrected?
Mass market advertising. Advertising works, or companies wouldn’t spend the dough on it that they do. The tobacco companies spend, to this day, huge sums of money on it. Full page ads in a wide variety of magazines aimed at young men and women. Look on the back of a random issue of Playboy, and you have a better than even chance of finding a cigarette ad. The counter provided, until very recently, has usually been on plain white pages with tons of small print–the kind of public release information you see for new drugs, and which most people routinely ignore.
Direct advertising. Brown and Williamson has their own magazine that they send to people whose addresses they get from free pack of cigarrette promotions (I know this because my granmother recieves this magazine promoting mythical “smokers’ rights”. Tobacco companies for years sent smokers “white papers” and other setting up government data as straw men, then knocking them down with pseudo-science arguments and gross distortions that would be very tempting for addicts to beleive. Again, I saw these among the many direct mail ads for cigarettes my grandmother recieved every month.
Product placement. Tobacco companies provide incentives to get their products into movies. There is no counter for the healthy, fit, cool people seen smoking on the big screen.
Willpower: Once again, you are generalizing from one case–yourself–to everyone. The fact that you can do something is not evidence that any other specific person is capable of the same thing.
There is cigarette advertising all over the place. None of this advertising says cigarettes are OK for your health.
Preaching to the converted, telling them what they want to hear. Sleazy? Sure. Justification for a jury award? No.
I see nothing wrong with this.
Let’s simplify this. Do you know anyone who has not heard that the Surgeon General does not recommend smoking? Do you know of anyone who believes that cigarette smoking is a healthy activity? Anyone who smokes but does not think he’d be better off if he quit? Anyone told you that nicotine is not addictive? Has anyone ever said to you that smoking does not cause cancer, heart disease, circulation problems, high blood pressure, etc? If they have, do you think they are telling the truth? If they are telling the truth, do they talk to themselves on the bus? Can they tie their own shoelaces? Did you ask how they were able to scrape enough money together for a pack? They do know it’s smoke, right?
Is there any data that says that people are just not getting the message that smoking is dangerous? It is my position that people have gotten the message, and some of us choose to smoke anyway. Some of them may try to delude themselves into rationalizations. I have no problem with that. It’s a free country. My problem is with our legal system rewarding their stupidity and their refusal to accept responsibility for their own actions.
If I meet someone like this, they are gonna feel a little sting from the back of my hand. Because I see it a perversion of justice and a threat to liberty. Maybe it’s my paranoia talking, but I feel that if we all act like children, someone is gonna step in and parent us.
We’re gonna have to take a stand somewhere. I think it should be here. It should be our position that you are free to drink, but you’re responsible for what you do when drunk. You are free to smoke, but responsible for the effects on your health. That just because something bad happened to you does not, in and of itself, mean that somebody owes you something. And you cannot get a jury award just because you are an idiot.
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Now that I think about, what else could the tobacco exec’s do but lie? Think about it for a sec. What would happen if they told the truth in light of the prevailing winds of our justice system. Maybe Minty Green or Jodi could answer this.
If they admitted that they knew, like everbody else, that cigarettes were addictive and dangerous, what would be the odds on them successfully fighting a lawsuit?
Ah, spooje, I’m afraid that here you are sorely mistaken. Like the woman who won a settlement from McDonald’s because she burned herself on their coffee, which was (shocker!) hot (no cite). Numerous other examples from contemporary society are available. Idiocy is one of the most traditionally lucrative industries in America.
You picked a bad example, White Lightning. There’s hot and then there’s hot. The coffee in the case you referred to (but didn’t cite) was so hot it caused third-degree burns, requiring extensive reconstructive surgery to her genitals.
There are frivolous lawsuits out there, and I think this thread has found many of them. But you haven’t.
Wouldn’t make much difference on compensatory liability, since there’s no real question that cigarettes cause cancer and such. If the tobacco companies admitted they were consciously lying years ago–not just that they were “mistaken”–that would be good grounds for punitive damages. Of course, to get to punitives, you first have to nail the defendant for basic liability. Hence, you have lying scumbag tobacco plaintiffs who are suing the lying scumbag tobacco defendants.
This (as previously provided). There is already irreversible damage. And, again, that being the case, the tobacco companies must assume at least part of the responsibility, even for smokers who continue to smoke beyond their teens.
As I mentioned before, the longer the person continues to smoke–assuming we accept the notion that anyone sufficently inclined can quit–the more of the total blame the person begins to assume. But the tobacco company does not suddenly become guiltless by virtue of this person reaching age 21.