And the US Department of Justice finally took the tobacco companies to court. Depending on where you sit, these are either the latest noises in a litigation explosion stimulated by zealous lawyers or the entirely proper use of the courts to remedy power imbalances between arrogant industries and ordinary citizens. By tort reform, the right means measures that make it harder for the little guy to have his day in court. But all of this has backfired. The courts are not taking kindly to efforts to deny citizens their right to legal redress.
Juries keep awarding large sums to consumers killed or maimed by corporate wrongs.
And while lawyers often live up to the stereotype, corporations do so in spades. In the popular culture, films like ''A Civil Action'' show lawyers with plenty of human blemishes, but the real villain of the piece is not the flawed lawyer but the evil corporation, which in this case knowingly dumped poisons into the local water supply, causing kids to contract leukemia. Faced with that reality, even the slickest public relations firm cannot convincingly demonize plaintiffs' trial lawyers. Despite the right-wing propaganda, the litigation explosion does not result from ambulance chasing lawyers but from corporate excess. The citizen's jury is perhaps our most powerful instrument of direct democracy.