Suing the tobacco and lead pigment industries : government litigation as public health prescription / Donald G. Gifford.

In Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries, legal scholar Donald G. Gifford recounts the transformation of tort litigation in response to the challenge posed by victims of 21st-century public health crises who seek compensation from the product manufacturers. Class action litigation promised a strategy for documenting collective harm, but an increasingly conservative judicial and political climate limited this strategy. Then, in 1995, Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore initiated a parens patriae action on behalf of the state against cigarette manufacturers. Forty-five other states soon filed public product liability actions, seeking both compensation for the funds spent on public health crises and the regulation of harmful products. Gifford finds that courts, through their refusal to expand traditional tort claims, have resisted litigation as a solution to product-caused public health problems. Even if the government were to prevail, the remedy in such litigation is unlikely to be effective. Gifford warns, furthermore, that by shifting the powers to regulate products and to remediate public health problems from the legislature to the state attorney general, parens patriae litigation raises concerns about the appropriate allocation of powers among the branches of government.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- The morning after the consumer century -- Product-caused diseases confront the law of the Iron Horse -- The first wave of challenges to the individual causation requirement -- The seeds of government-sponsored litigation -- A failure of democratic processes? : legislative responses to the public health problems caused by tobacco and lead pigment -- The government as plaintiff : parens patriae actions against tobacco and gun manufacturers -- Judicial rejection of recovery for collective harm : public nuisance and the Rhode Island paint litigation -- Do litigation remedies cure product-caused public health problems? -- Impersonating the legislature : state attorneys general and parens patriae products litigation -- Conclusion.

Print version record.

English.

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