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of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “There’s too much at stake here.”
    In the President’s Room, Gauthier was rallying his forces with self-deprecating Cajun jokes. As the meal was nearing completion, he announced the arrival of Santa Claus. “We are going to send the tobacco lawyers a little Christmas present,” he said to loud applause. In walked a man in a red costume sporting a white flowing beard and carrying aloft on a silver platter one of Antoine’s baked Alaskas. Its sides were covered with “No Smoking” signs in red icing. “Take the tobacco companies their present,” ordered Gauthier, and the Santa walked out of the President’s Room, passed the table with Gary Black and the Wall Street analysts, and burst through the pine doors of the Rex Room singing, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas to one and all.” The company lawyers were appalled, refused to accept the gift, shoved the Santa out of the room, and left the restaurant in a huff, abandoning their brandies, and, of course, their cigars. The enemy had been engaged.
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    I N THE COMING MONTHS , New Orleans would be the headquarters of the antitobacco forces, a gathering place for the new challengers of Big Tobacco, whose ranks swelled with each new exposure of the industry’s deceitful past. Confidential documents were found in archives and attics and unearthed from the basements of courtrooms where long-forgotten members of the plaintiffs’ bar had lost contests with the industry. One cache of scientific reports came from a woman who sought revenge on her lover, a researcher from Philip Morris who had left boxes of company documents at her house. Each month, it seemed, brought fresh evidence of tobacco industry lies and deceptions; how they had hidden research into smoking and health, manipulated nicotine levels, and sneakily targeted children in their advertising and promotion.
    The tobacco companies had finally met their match. Here for the first time was an enemy that showed no fear of their superior legal forces and unlimited funds. Here was an enemy that would play legal tricks and more besides. They turned company whistle-blowers into national heroes, put stolen industry files on the Internet, leaked protected court documents, and persuaded judges to release papers the tobacco industry had long hidden from public view. Finally, they did a secret deal with the smallest of the tobacco companies, dragging the bigger ones to the negotiating table.
    The lawsuits against the industry would mushroom. The American legal system had never witnessed such a contest in civil actions as would unfold over the next three years. By the middle of 1997, at least 530 law firms and thousands of attorneys were engaged in the battle for the hearts and lungs of Americans. Half of the country’s largest law firms, charging fees of up to $500 an hour, were working for the tobacco companies. Another 182 firms had joined the ranks of the anti-tobacco forces. The annual legal bill for the Big Six tobacco companies—Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, American Tobacco Company, and Liggett & Myers—amounted to $600 million dollars. More than 300 lawsuits were pending against them with potential damages of hundreds of billions of dollars. The long arm of U.S. civil law had even drawn in Britain’s biggest tobacco enterprise, BAT Industries.
    America’s one-hundred-year war against tobacco seemed set for a final battle in court. The traditional crusaders against smoking, the “Health Nazis,” as the industry dubbed them—the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, Action on Smoking and Health, the Advocacy Institute, Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, Doctors Ought to Care, and a host of small, independent tobacco education and control groups—took a backseat while the liability lawyers poured their