The attempt to hold Paladin liable is similar to recent legislative proposals to hold gun manufacturers liable when their products are used in crime and pornography publishers liable when their consumers commit sex offenses. Once the principle is accepted that someone other than the conscious participants in crime are responsible, there is no stopping point. This notion must be condemned without reservation. There is a host of problems with the theory. First, the tobacco companies don't force anyone to smoke.
People choose to do so.
Advocates of those lawsuits say the tobacco companies withhold information about the risks of smoking. But that doesn't wash. People have long known that smoking entails risks. That was a little more than 100 years after the Europeans learned about tobacco. The biological effects of nicotine were discovered about a century ago.