Every day a new development strengthens the public's position. In the next seven months, four states will go to trial. If anyone is worried about the strength of those cases, or about who should be first up to bat, I can tell you we'll be happy to go first in Minnesota, where our trial is set for January 19, if others would prefer to delay their cases to see how we do. We can't wait to tell a jury about the things we've found among the industry's secret documents. They're smoking howitzers.
Some people think all the important information is already out.
The depth, the pervasiveness of this conspiracy and fraud is overwhelming. There has never been anything like it. Because of our court's orders, I can't talk about some of the things we're doing. But I can tell you that I read a newspaper report yesterday that says our attorneys deposed the former research director of Philip Morris on Monday and that he took the Fifth Amendment. Without my commenting on the accuracy of that report, I want you to think what will happen to public opinion, just a few months from now, if senior tobacco executives start parading before juries, and showing up on the evening news, invoking the Fifth Amendment whenever they're asked about whether they buried the technology to make cigarettes safer, or how they manipulated nicotine.