L.A. Times has some good coverage of the Justice Department’s much-criticized decision last week (see Jun. 10) to scale back the damages it’s asking in its wretched Clinton-legacy tobacco suit:
Law professor Turley [Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, not suspected of overmuch sympathy with the views of this page] said he believed “legal realism and political realism” were the main reasons for the 11th-hour retreat.
The Justice Department had “seemed to be in institutional denial,” Turley said of the consequences of the appeals court defeat [in February, before a D.C. Circuit panel]. “By reducing the (requested) damages it brings the case more in line with that ruling.”
Noting that the case has lasted six years at huge cost to the government, Turley said Justice officials are “very sensitive about the ‘resume factor’ in this case.” The change “lays the groundwork for the spin that they labeled the industry as racketeers and they got the damages they asked for,” he said.
Tobacco lawyers have ridiculed the new proposal. Ted Wells, a lawyer for Philip Morris USA, said it was a $280 billion case, then a $130 billion case, now a $10 billion case and “eventually it will be a zero-dollar case.”
(Myron Levin, “Civil case against tobacco is turning to ash”, Los Angeles Times/Detroit News, Jun. 11).
Comments are closed.