Search

JUST BEFORE THE END OF 1969, a Business Week writer doing a story about the effect of an impending TV and radio advertising blackout on the cigarette industry stumbled onto [...]

Peter Castano couldn't quit smoking. It was humiliating. He first lit up at 16, and swore to stop when his fiancee insisted on it as a condition of their marriage. [...]

The article examines a trend in environmental activism in which lawyers for environmental groups are planning lawsuits against major energy industries firms claiming damages for economic and environmental effects of climatic changes. The strategy is related to research indicating those companies account for a vast majority of pollution leading to climatic changes and to the litigation strategy pursued by anti-smoking advocates against the tobacco industry.

The article focuses on the civil justice system and "tort reform". The US Chamber of Commerce is urging voters to support lawsuit restrictions endorsed by George W. Bush and opposed by John Kerry. Chamber president Thomas Donohue charged that "lawsuit abuse destroys jobs, drives doctors out of business and forces companies into bankruptcy." Piggybacking on the campaign of an incumbent President--who made lawsuit restrictions a central part of his governorship in Texas--the tort reformers have seized on this election as their defining moment. The Bush campaign has hit hard at the Kerry/Edwards ticket for allegedly being pawns of plaintiff's attorneys. But regardless of whether or not the issue helps Bush get re-elected, its heightened prominence demonstrates the escalation of the stakes in what is now a thirty-year-long war by the ultra-right to disembowel the civil justice system and make America safer for companies to work their unfettered will. In Texas, however, the future is already here, thanks to several generous helpings of "reform." Anyone who wants a glimpse of what's in store for the rest of us would do well to look at Bush's legacy in his home state. In his first months as governor of Texas, a job he won with the help of $1.3 million from the extremist Texans for Lawsuit Reform, Bush declared an "emergency" on "frivolous lawsuits" and rammed through the legislature a series of bills restricting suits. Now Bush has become the first President to make downsizing the civil courts a signature concern of both his Administration and his re-election effort.

Nothing could better illustrate the pending extinction of civil action as a tool for fighting corporate criminality than a measure that will effectively do away with many types of class-action [...]

This article focuses on the airing of the program "Smoke Screen," on television advertising of cigarette industry by ABC. Within weeks of the broadcast on February 28,1994, Congressional hearings were under way to explore the program's central charge: that tobacco companies deliberately fine-tune nicotine levels to keep millions of Americans addicted to cigarettes. In addition, the media disparaging of "Smoke Screen" was done without the benefit of tens of thousands of pages of internal Philip Morris documents turned over to ABC during the lawsuit and returned after the settlement, when all case records were sealed and a gag order imposed. INSET: Comments, by D.Z..

While the differences between George W. Bush and Al Gore may still be coming into focus for many Americans in the final weeks before the election, one is already stark. [...]

Single-function energy management equipment such as electro-mechanical timers, solid state duty-cyclers and temperature controls are favored by users with small energy needs in their conservation efforts. Most claim that the inexpensive costs make it easier to retrieve payback values, and their installation create no problems.

Industrial energy management system users cite unreliability of manufacturers in providing service and backup support as chief reason of frustration. Some are satisfied owing to the availability of repair and maintenance services on their own premises.