A Dispatch from America’s Tobacco Litigation Ranks: Primary Assumption of Risk and Personal Responsibility in a Comparative Fault Age

After a run of nearly fifty years in the courts, it remarkably continues to regenerate itself, every once in a while tossing off a noteworthy grape for notice, study and efforts at transplantation elsewhere. In the early 1990s, for example, tobacco litigation was first exported to foreign jurisdictions – chiefly Europe, but elsewhere as well. Although efforts to get tobacco litigation off the ground in Europe continue, it did eventually land and take root in South America, where it continues to run its course. Tobacco companies in the United States have seen congressional inquiry and government litigation attempt to transform the manufacture, marketing and defense of a legal product into claimed violations of federal civil racketeering laws (i.e., Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or "RICO"), which culminated in the case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against the tobacco industry in 1999.