April 2002

From Northeastern University

Tobacco settlement lawyers discuss strategy at NU conference

Lawyers winning big verdicts against tobacco companies share their strategies at Northeastern conference

BOSTON, Mass. -- While Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds this week are meeting with shareholders who want to increase profits, anti-tobacco attorneys who are meeting in Boston have other plans. Every U.S. attorney who has won punitive damages against a tobacco company in an individual smoker's case along with other leaders in the legal movement against the tobacco industry will be presenting at the Tobacco Products Liability Project (TPLP) Annual Conference at Northeastern University School of Law this Friday through Sunday.

Speakers will include Chuck Tauman and Larry Wobbrock, who won $150 million in punitive damages award against Philip Morris last month in Oregon; Los Angeles attorney Michael Piuze, who won a $3 billion dollar punitive damages award last summer (reduced by the trial judge to $100 million) in his first tobacco trial; Madelyn Chaber from San Francisco, who has won punitive damages against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and

Lorillard in three trials; Kenneth B. McClain, who beat R.J. Reynolds in February in a federal court in Kansas City, Kansas this year where a judge will soon decide the amount of punitive damages; and Woody Wilner, who won a verdict against Brown & Williamson Corp. in 1996 that survived appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other speakers include Stephen Sheller, who is blazing a new trail of consumer fraud-based class actions involving so-called "light" cigarettes around the country; jury consultant Judy Rothschild; forensic economist Robert Johnson; and expert witnesses Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Center and Dr. Richard Hurt of the Mayo Medical School in Minnesota. The conference is for plaintiffs' lawyers only and attendees will be required to sign an affidavit stating that they do not and will not do work for or on behalf of the tobacco industry.

Documents-savvy paralegal Ray Goldstein, who has worked on all four of the successful California trials, will discuss the "Trial in a Box" CD-Rom-based on Piuze's Boeken case which resulted in the initial punitive damages award of $3 billion last year in Los Angeles. Goldstein, along with Piuze's legal assistant Paula Lawlor, and attorney Holly Holstrop, initiated an unprecedented effort to share their experience and legal resources with other attorneys seeking to take on tobacco companies. As part of this effort, the Boeken Trial in a Box resources, including pleadings, transcripts, trial exhibits, and background material is available on TPLP's website http://tplp.org/box.

"It is really extraordinary to see such an unprecedented level of success in the legal fight against tobacco companies along with a new willingness to share and collaborate among those doing battle, said Northeastern University School of Law professor Richard A. Daynard, who chairs TPLP and will moderate the conference. "The availability to any plaintiff attorney of a free 'Trial-in-a-Box' means these cases can now be brought and won almost anywhere in the U.S."

Speakers at the conference will be available for interviews (please call or e-mail for arrangements). See our list of recent plaintiff victories and more information about the conference.



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