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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Burry who wrote (7021)	5/2/1999 4:59:00 PM
From: Tomato	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78749

What I wonder about tobacco companies is what happens to the stocks when foreign countries start taking a cue from the states' attorneys general and the US Justice Dept. and start suing them? Isn't Canada doing that now?

To: Michael Burry who wrote (7021)	5/3/1999 12:04:00 PM
From: LauA	Respond to of 78749

The Lorillard case should be viewed as an asbestos case rather than a tobacco one. However it may indicate the willingness of juries to find a culprit whenever something bad happens. Actually, there have been one or two other cases lost in the Lorillard series. In fact it is a wonder that there aren't lots because during the 1950's Kent cigarettes boasted one of their product's benefits was that they had a Micronite filter. Micronite of course was made from asbestos. If you wanted to set up an experiment to study mesothelioma, you would do a smoking rat study, coupled with aerosolized asbestos, ie. give them Kents. I don't know whether this scores points in court, but the New Yorker Magazine did a multi-part series on mesothelioma arising among asbestos workers belonging to a New Jersey trade union during the late 1950's. It specifically noted that workers who smoked had a multiplied incidence of lung cancer. In effect, the relation of asbestos to mesothelioma in particular had been medically accepted before the Surgeon General officially decreed the risks of tobacco. My reading of this recent decision is that there is still a perceived difference between the responsibilities in the cases of asbestos versus tobacco. My caveat is that I still cannot figure the rationale for the bankrupting of multiple medical device companies for the production of silicone and derivative devices. (Then again, I knew some geriatric pediatricians who were bankrupted 21 years after giving 'too much' oxygen to babies in a neonatal unit. {Your malpractice coverage doesn't increase with time, but your compounded liability does.}) Legal fads are real, and dangerous. Lau