It would have easy to pick the deep pockets clean. The auto company that made the car with the engine that tempted me to exceed the speed limit gets the same subpoena as the maker of the CD player. After all the CD player caused a distraction while making the call on the cellular phone. The phone shouldn't have been there in the first place, so whoever invented that gets to go to the grand jury. The coffee spilled all over the place, though it wasn't hot enough to burn me, it's likely that it didn't have enough caffeine to keep me going.
Somebody has to pay for that, too.
It would have been a beauty of a bundled liability suit, and my lawyers and me would have stuck gold. Last November the American Tobacco companies paved the way for massive industry wide liability damages by settling in advance with 46 states and the Federal Government, all future liability for tobacco related health claims. But with lawyers from 46 states and the United States Department of Justice chasing your business quick settlement is the smart money. Even if the settlement has no credibility and more zeroes at the end of it than most government revenue agents can count. Since its earliest days the Clinton administration has targeted the tobacco industry, paving a legal highway that is fraught with risk to the American economy and is unprecedented in our judicial heritage.