Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Juries and Tobacco

Picture it. It's the late 70's and California's own Leslie Whiteley, Stayin' Alive the ironic soundtrack of her day, picks up a pack of smokes for the first time. Right there on the pack, in an easy-to-see black box, is a warning saying, essentially, "Hey Leslie, we the tobacco companies would love for you to smoke these cigarettes, ohhhhh how we would love that, but you should know going in, that it'll probably kill ya."

Leslie smokes them anyway.

Now, 25 years later, what is her reward for her stupidity? I mean besides a horribly painful death from lung cancer, of course? Twenty million freakin' dollars!!!

This is wrong for so many reasons. So, so many. Not the least of which is the fact that this is the first time the tobacco companies have been held liable for the health of someone who took up smoking after the Surgeon General required warning labels on all cigarette packs in 1965. Fortunately, this case will be taken out of the hands of juries for the appellate stage of this case and we can only hope that a levelheaded judge will determine that this is a precedent that just cannot be set.

And that precedent is, potentially, this: a company engaged in the legal sale of a legal product can be held liable for the consequences of the legal use of that legal product, even if those consequences are well-known and well-documented.

Take a condom, for instance. We should all know by now (and in case you don't, it says so right on the package) that nothing but abstinence, condoms included, can guarantee 100% safety from transmission of the AIDS virus. So should the good people at Trojan have to pay everyone who chooses to go with the odds, but contracts the virus from sex while wearing a condom anyway?

What about Ford? Seatbelts greatly improve one's chances of surviving a car accident. We all know this. Should Ford have to pay every time someone's family member is killed in a crash they should have been able to survive because they chose not to wear the safety belt in their F-150?

Say it with me people (particularly those of you who might be serving on civil juries in the near-future)...tragedy does not absolve you of personal responsibility.

Some people want to compare this to the lawsuits that have been won against gun manufacturers for deaths and injuries attributed to their legal product, but The Pen thinks there is an important distinction here. In a gun death, the weapon is, by definition, not used in a legal manner, and often an outright felony is involved. I can understand, even though I disagree with, a jury's desire to punish gun manufacturers for crimes committed with their product. We all crave justice, and sometimes the voice of that craving becomes even more strident when we cannot extract justice from those who are truly responsible: the criminals.

But the unfortunate fact remains that no one is responsible for Leslie's cancer but Leslie.