In addition, tobacco litigation is enormously complex. The Williams team spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to assemble its case. The kind of effort needed to defeat a corporate titan like Philip Morris can easily exhaust the resources of plaintiffs' attorneys, who typically work in small firms or in solo practice. In the wake of the Minnesota settlement, however, suing cigarette makers has gotten simpler, in part because a network of plaintiffs' attorneys and anti-tobacco activists is busily trading unflattering confidential company memos released in Minnesota. The Williams case was only the second smoker's trial against Philip Morris in which plaintiffs' attorneys were able to take advantage of those documents.
Industry analysts are nervous about the implications.
The plaintiff lawyers have been very effective at using the documents on an emotional basis. The Williams trial is just the beginning.