Cornered Read Free

return, he could always be relied upon for a prediction of when the industry would collapse under the weight of lawsuits.
    â€œHow about the spring of 1996?”
    â€œHow about 2001?”
    â€œHow about the date of Motley’s next wedding?”
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œFish or steak?” interrupted the waiters. No pigeonneaux royaux sauce paradis for this crowd. Not yet, anyway.
    *   *   *
    O N THE OTHER SIDE of the restaurant, by coincidence as it turned out, the Rex Room had been booked by a group of lawyers representing the tobacco companies. Wood-paneled and hung with portraits of the past kings of the Krewe of Rex of Mardi Gras, the room was an appropriate place for the blue bloods of the legal profession who had flown in for the court hearing: lawyers from Chadbourne & Parke of New York; Jones, Day of Cleveland; King & Spalding of Atlanta; and Shook, Hardy & Bacon of Kansas City, all old campaigners for the tobacco barons. In contrast to Gauthier’s guests, they sat restrained and somber at a long pine table. They were war weary.
    The First and Second Waves of the campaign had been hard fought. The figures spoke for themselves. Eight hundred and thirteen claims filed against the industry, twenty-three tried in court, two lost, both overturned on appeal. Not a penny paid in damages.
    The tobacco barons showed no sign of compromise in the face of the new enemy. They had retreated into their bunkers, predicting the furor would pass and accused Gauthier and his followers of jumping on a “publicity bandwagon” created by the media. Victor Schwartz, of the Washington, D.C., law firm of Crowell & Moring, which advises clients on tobacco litigation, said, “It’s déjà vu, except for very powerful attorneys whom I have great respect for.”
    A new element in the Third Wave was complicating old formulas, however. In four states—Mississippi, Minnesota, Florida, and West Virginia—an entirely fresh approach to tobacco litigation was being taken by the states’ attorneys general. They were seeking to recoup billions of dollars the states had paid under the Medicaid program to care for poor people with smoking-related diseases. The idea was to treat the tobacco industry like any other commercial enterprise whose product had caused harm—like asbestos and toxic waste dumps—and make them pay for the cleanup. Though the tobacco industry quickly dismissed these claims as frivolous and having no chance of success, in time they would become even more of a legal threat than Gauthier’s grand class action, providing the other half of the pincer movement that finally brought the industry to the negotiating table in 1997.
    Tired though the industry lawyers had become and facing forces they had never before encountered, they still relished the looming conflict. Defending tobacco lawsuits was a lucrative business, one of the best, and they believed they could be victorious. They looked down on Gauthier’s group as a lower caste—greedy, attention grabbing, and a disgrace to the profession. They would prevail, as they had always done, or so they thought. In the Rex Room that night, Phil Wittman, a local lawyer representing tobacco defendants, said of Gauthier’s suit, “It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. It’s stuff that’s been out there a long time.”
    Wall Street didn’t think so. The financial risk to the industry was “staggering,” stock analysts had warned. Losing Gauthier’s suit could result in damages of $100 billion—twice the industry’s annual sales revenue.
    In between the two groups of lawyers at Antoine’s that night, at a table in the open dining room, sat a group of four investment analysts from New York. They had flown down to attend the court hearing. They were so nervous, they wouldn’t talk. “We can’t say anything,” said the normally garrulous Gary Black,