I spent over a decade on the front lines of the tobacco wars in Florida. I did not watch the battles unfold from the safety of a high-rise office building. I fought on the courtroom battlefield in over a dozen multi-week trials. There were few lawyers willing to take on the challenge. But the select few lawyers that did, became known as “tobacco lawyers.” The tobacco lawyers earned their combat badges the hard way, winning and losing some of the most contentious trials in history.
The war began in the early 1990s with a class action lawsuit known as the Engle class. After an unprecedented year-long trial in 1999-2000, the plaintiff class won an unprecedented $146 billion verdict against the tobacco industry.
