Ron Motley, Who Spearheaded Tobacco Suits, Dies at 68

[joeybee12]

Ronald L. Motley, a South Carolina lawyer who spearheaded lawsuits against tobacco companies that led them to agree to pay $246 billion in the biggest civil settlement in U.S. history, has died. He was 68.

He died yesterday at Roper Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, Don Migliori, a partner in his law firm, said in an interview. The cause was complications from organ failure, he said.

Motley pioneered the development of mass-tort litigation to sue tobacco makers in the 1990s such as Altria Group Inc. (MO)’s Philip Morris unit and companies that sold asbestos-laden building products, such as Johns Manville Corp. He recovered billions of dollars for workers and consumers who blamed the manufacturers’ products for their illnesses.

“Ron Motley changed the playing field for individuals seeking to hold companies accountable in this country,” said Richard Harpootlian, a Columbia, South Carolina-based plaintiffs’ lawyer who had known Motley for 38 years. “He may well have been the best trial lawyer of his generation.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/ron-motley-who-spearheaded-tobacco-suits-is-dead.html

RIP

[Politicalboi]

1. Now we need someone to

Go after the alcohol companies. They still have their commercials on TV, and influence children to drink. Remember the 3 Budweiser frogs, but Joe Camel on a billboard in the middle of Los Angeles had to go. Alcohol has cause more grief than tobacco EVER could.

[Warpy]

2. While she was taking a long time dying from tobacco

my mother said she had no sympathy for such lawsuits, that everybody knew smoking was bad for them even when tobacco companies were lying their asses off about it. She'd grown up hearing cigarettes called "coffin nails" and still started to smoke them when she was a teenager.

I don't know what to make of that, if she'd have started smoking if truth in advertising had prevailed, "This is a product kids use to look older and cooler, but it's addictive and will kill them unless they go through the hell of withdrawal." Or even portraying smokers in late middle age, their skin ruined by the action of nicotine on blood vessel walls, wheezing while going up a single flight of stairs.

While my mother disagreed, I think Motley was right to go after the tobacco companies for all those decades of lying. They didn't have to watch my mother die. I did.