First of 8,000 lawsuits against Big Smoke for addicting consumers to a deadly product

[MagusSteele]

The US's newest Lottery,
Sue EVERYONE for EVERYTHING and get yours Now.

[Bertrand]

They don't have the resources of tobacco companies to defend themselves if there are lawsuits. Financially they stand to lose the shirts off their backs and their livelihoods. Socially they will have more problems, justifying making a profit from selling toxins will be one of them.

North Americans tend to focus on financial punishments but I believe there are worse things, stigma being one.

Yes - but if they don't have the resource to pay out the claim, it's a bit pointless suing them. It's also a different situation. Tobacco companies did the research and knew the toxic potential of their product.

E-liquid sellers don't. They could be accused of not doing their due diligence, perhaps, but I'm not sure they would attract the same stigma. They would say "Nobody knew," and they would be right.

[sixstring]

I'll just say this, then bow out of this debate quietly...

Take a big drag of a real cigarette, and exhale the smoke forcefully thru a piece of white tissue paper, then do the same with an e-cig on a different spot of the same tissue...

The brown crap is obviously worse for us than the not-brown crap...

What most of the "sue-happy" shmucks in the US lack is simple common sense.

[Bertrand]

What most of the "sue-happy" shmucks in the US lack is simple common sense.

Only if they don't win. I personally think negligence cases are important. Otherwise companies can be as incompetent as they like, potentially killing people, without any repercussions.

The courts in the US seem to have established a broader definition of "damage" than elsewhere, though. For instance, they tend to give higher payouts for mental suffering, and set the bar lower for it. But these are just details, and in our case we are not talking about "mental suffering." We are talking about dying.

[Kate]

If they sell a 'healthier' product, they are making claims that they are responsible for. At the very least it is misrepresentation if they have no proof. Do your trading laws allow unfounded claims about health?

If someone becomes ill because of a product they were sold as a 'healthier' alternative there is a clear case to answer.

The research is being done by us as guinea pigs, the claims are being made by sellers as profiteers. They know they are dealing addictive poison but do not present it as such. Pillbox is the only seller I've come across who has made an effort to use safer packaging and warnings on eliquid.

They can't say 'nobody knew' it wasn't safe, they do know at least about nicotine and what they don't know they shouldn't be misrepresenting by making any claims.

If Pillbox knows it's toxic and can give us warnings on bottles then other sellers can be expected to know, it's not a secret.

[Bertrand]

If they sell a 'healthier' product, they are making claims that they are responsible for.

That's true. They could point to the NZ report, though.

If Pillbox knows it's toxic and can give us warnings on bottles then other sellers can be expected to know, it's not a secret.

Yeah, I wasn't really thinking of the nicotine. This is fairly established - I was thinking of genuinely unknown toxic effects.

[Magarnagle]

It was a similar deal with a company (CSR) that ran some asbestos mining operations here in Australia. Throughout the fifties and sixties the company had been informed multiple times of the links between asbestos and mesothelioma, but they chose to ignore the research, and continued operations without adequate ventilation, dust suppression, masks or any other acknowledgement that the people working with asbestos may have long term health problems. A doctor who visited the minesite at Wittenoom in 1957 advised CSR that the risk was extremely high that workers would have major health problems.

In the 80's and 90's, law suits started coming out claiming against the company. These cases were dragged out over as much time as CSR could wrangle. In the end, the desired result was achieved, most of the claimants died of asbestos related lung diseases. Eventually some of the suits were continued by the surviving relatives, and the company had to pay out considerable damages. Probably not a patch on the amount of loot they would have made out of asbestos in the first place.

CSR is still trading.

I agree with Kate. If a company denies liability, and in fact creates a product that is known to them to be unsafe or dangerous but continues telling the world how safe it is just to turn a buck for the shareholders, they need to be brought down. Whether that's through litigation, or some other way, they need to be accountable for their decisions, on a PERSONAL level as well as a corporate level. Too many corporate executives make completely unethical or illegal decisions to pad out their bonuses. They quit, move on to another company, and then the original company wears the repercussions of their lack of ethics.

It bugs the hell out of me.

Oh, and the shareholders of such companies have a huge responsibility to demand ethical decisions be made by the company. There's no point sitting on your shares and complaining about how the world is going to pieces, when there's a shareholders meeting coming up. But unfortunately piping up at a shareholder's meeting doesn't make you many friends there, and has the potential to decrease your returns.

[TropicalBob]

Small update on that lawsuit: It was thrown out because a lawyer used the "N" word in court. The judge thought that was enough to prejudice three black jurors. The case was forwarded to the January docket to start over again.

[dc2k08]

hmm, i would be interested in reading this research project about racism in the tobacco industry and what it had to do with the plaintiff's case. sounds like this 'expert witness' will be able to bring it up again as long as he doesn't use the dreaded 'n' word.

[Bertrand]

hmm, i would be interested in reading this research project about racism in the tobacco industry and what it had to do with the plaintiff's case. sounds like this 'expert witness' be able to bring it up again as long as he doesn't use the dreaded 'n' word.

I have a faint recollection about documentary about smoking in which a tobacco CEO was surprised that one of their mascots was still smoking. His alleged response was something like, "it's just the poor and blacks who smoke these days." Tobacco company folk are evil.