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Part III: Tort Reform or Pork Reform? The under belly of the "ATRA" and Big Tobacco tort reformers.

By Steve Lombardi

Dear Darren McKinney: Many people aren't familiar with the American Tort Reform Association or why it was started. They don't know the pivotal events of what gave the ATRA the reasons to exist and to begin their campaign of trying to persuade America that corporate responsibility is a bad idea. Most of the American public, probably including you Mr. McKinney don't remember why your bosses decided to crawl out from under the rock where they were hiding. Remember Big Tobacco and the post from yesterday? Well way back in the day, that was who was involved with creating the ATRA.

Yesterday's post was all about the financial wrongdoings going on in America that demonstrate what the ATRA doesn't talk about that seem a whole lot more important than a cup of hot coffee, a pair of lost pants, a goose on the sidewalk outside a store, one laptop computer and a box of cereal. As one example I asked why that stupid lawsuit asking for $50 million for a lost pair of pants at the drycleaners was more important than say Bernie Madoff actually stealing $50 Billion from elderly investor's retirement savings. I thought you were going to comment so I asked questions. And checking that post from yesterday there still isn't a response from the ATRA or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Are you guys having a hard time finding that post? Well let me make it easy for you, here is the link and then the financial wrongdoing # 17 from yesterday.

Part II: Tort Reform or Pork Reform? My reply to the A.T.R.A.

17. And then there was Big Tobacco and the Tobacco Institute that said for a long time that lung cancer couldn't be proven to be caused by smoking cigarettes. Those are the guys that turned my mother into a widow and made us five Lombardi kids poor. Those are the guys that I watched taking oaths before our Congress and repeatedly lied. Do you doubt me Mr. McKinney? Do you and your buddies at the ATRA and the US Chamber doubt this is true? Here look at the CEO's of Big Tobacco tell us that pregnant woman can safely smoke.

Oh my I'm not playing nicey-nicey am I? Well let's consider the evidence and see how nice you'd be to me if you were me.

What's the history of Big Tobacco and the ATRA?

Philip Morris CEO Tells Pregnant Moms Smoking is Safe – Small babies born to mothers that smoke are happy babies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpwcF3Malj8

And remember the Philip Morris Research Scientist that compared smoking cigarettes to eating apples. You remember it was the guy that said, you could die from eating too much apple sauce.

Nothing found in tobacco smoke is harmful – Really? Is this the code of corporate responsibility the ATRA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are advocating for in America?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o5LJITMBLc

And then there was that addiction issue that never seemed to go away. Remember it? Well allow me to refresh your recollections. This is where Big Tobacco said nicotine is not addictive.

Question: Does the ATRA and the Chamber condemn lying before Congress?

Answer:

Question: Will the ATRA and the Chamber executives publicly condemn lying before the American Congress?

Answer:

Do the Seven Dwarfs contribute to the American Tort Reform Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Oh you don't know about the Seven Dwarfs? No not the Disney characters, these seven were the mouthpieces Big Tobacco sent to testify before the U.S. Congress. Here watch this video tape of the Seven Dwarfs.

The Seven Dwarves: I believe that nicotine is not addictive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUNk5meJHs

Question: What does the ATRA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their financial backers say about whether nicotine is addictive?

Answer: Insert your answers below in the comments section.

Refocusing away from pregnant mothers, lung cancer and addicted adults let's see what Big Tobacco said to kids when I was very young.

Do you recall Mr. McKinney that kids were being encouraged to smoke cigarettes? They were trust me, but if you don't trust me watch this commercial that I remember as a small child that played while I was watching the Flintstones. Here is one of the commercials that some say weren't intended to influence the choices that children made about cigarettes.

Big Tobacco would NEVER try to appeal to kids – Rich tobacco specially selected and specially processed for good flavor in filtered smoke. Nicely put ad slogan, is that the kind of corporate responsibility the ATRA and the Chamber are advocating for?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FylwVZYkJZ0

Before we leave Big Tobacco I'd like to explain something about me that you probably don't know. But first I'd like to look at the message Big Tobacco gave my mother. Big Tobacco, the ATRA and the Chamber would probably all describe her as an all-American woman. She raised five kids all by her self. She doesn't smoke or drink and goes to church every day. She says the rosary and never forgets a birthday.

If a woman wants to feel safe, she needs to find a man that smokes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs_fKE6ykpw

My mother heard Big Tobacco's ads that manly-men smoke but I don't believe she received the same message that you intended women to get. You know the one that said, 'Women feel safe with men that smoke.' She may have received a different message when her husband lay in bed with lung cancer dying. It took him two whole years to die, but he didn't go fast. He died a little at a time second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month over a two year period. That's pretty slow even in tobacco years. First they took out one of his lungs, but the cancer spread to his other lung. So then he was basically screwed. He believed you ATRA-Tobacco-Chamber guys and smoked since he was 13. At 13 I'm sure he thought smoking cigarettes made him look tough, real manly.

Do you have any idea what a person's chest and stomach look like after the surgeons have cut out a lung? I do because he showed me. Want me to tell you? I know what those large brass staple stitches looked like poking through pussy swollen red skin. The incision runs all along one whole side of your torso and then it does a 90 degree turn across the lower part of your stomach and ends when it reaches the other side. I believe his incision started on his upper right and ran down to his waist line then across his lower abdomen to his left side. Now how did I remember that after 42 years? The surgeons then pull back this huge flap of skin to expose his lungs. Then they cut the one bad lung out, sew up all the parts that want to keep bleeding, sewed up his stomach and then they inserted these large brass looking metal staples to hold it all together so his good lung didn't fall out on the floor. After awhile the skin around those staples got sort of infected but that was better than how he felt while enduring the chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He got so sick from the chemicals and radiation that he puked almost non-stop. My parents were pretty good about hiding that from us five kids.

You know how I know what his chest and stomach looked like? I know because my father took me in his bedroom, lifted up his white blood stained t-shirt and showed me his torso as he asked me to never smoke cigarettes. He died a little over a year after that bedroom show-and-tell. He was in his mid thirties and left my mother alone to raise 5 kids all under the age of 14. The youngest was 2-years-old. My father had no life insurance and my mother had less than a high school education. She knew how to sew and alter clothes and that's what she did for the next 20 years. She sewed other people's clothes to put food on our kitchen table.

You talk about honesty, I'll tell you about honesty. You want to know what an honest day's work looks like. My mother could show the Wall Street CEO's what an honest day's work looks like. She's 82 and still has three jobs and wouldn't accept a participation trophy if the ATRA/Chamber/Big Tobacco covered it in real gold. When I was growing up she worked from sun up till sun down. So let's see what your bosses were telling my mother and the rest of the American female public as we buried my father.

But before we move onto the whole lung cancer distraction, as I'm sure you guys refer to it, let me ask you another question.

Question: Are the Madison Avenue Advertising firms that created those despicable smoking commercials the same Ad-Guys and Gals creating your tort reform campaign ads?

Answer:

Another question just occurred to me. I know I ask a lot of questions, but just humor me.

Question: With a lot of the ad people out of work due to the automotive industry melt-down and Congress saying no to more Big Tobacco TV Ads, are you guys at the Chamber and the ATRA getting better commercial ad rates?

Answer:

Do you mind if I call you Darren, Mr. McKinney? I'm starting to feel a sense of really knowing you and your bosses. Let's get back to my childhood.

Because of dad's lung cancer I missed those 'manly-men times' with my father. Did your father attend baseball games with you? You know the father-and-son game they had every year in the Babe Ruth leagues. Do you attend with your sons and daughters? I remember seeing all the other ball players with their dads. They looked pretty happy. I told my mom to stay home, because it would just bring more attention to the fact mine had died. If you were there with me you would have seen everyone shuffling from one foot to the other feeling uncomfortable as they looked in my direction.

Uncomfortable, that's an interesting word. Because my father looked really uncomfortable as he spent the last year-and-a-half at home in bed with only one lung and the other failing. Of course I can't tell you about the last six months of his life because the hospital refused to let us kids in to see him. We did play a lot in the hospital parking lot for that last six months. The only real memory I have of that parking lot is him waiving to us from his hospital window. He looked like hell. Hair falling out, frail, skin and bones, helpless, hopeless really, and being held up by his father. My mother was trying to wipe away the tears as we waved back yelling to him that we couldn't' wait for him to come home again. Funny to write that today, you see he never did come home again. I won't bore the Chamber, the ATRA and Big Tobacco with the day mom came home to tell us she didn't have to go back to the hospital anymore that dad was dead. That was a memorable day. Probably the start of my wanting to be a lawyer. Probably the start of my wanting justice and for you and your boys to start understanding corporate responsibility.

One thing I miss is him taking me to the neighborhood barber shop for a haircut. Did you dad take you for your first haircut? Fun wasn't it. Whenever I have to listen to you guys bore me with your next verbal attack against trial lawyers I play this commercial. Here sit and join me. See if we can enjoy it together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3jsnKhuF60

You're probably wondering about why he didn't get treatment sooner aren't you? I can see that look in your eye. Well let me explain that finer point to you. He did go to the doctor when he first began having symptoms. And the doctor quickly arrived at a diagnosis without wasting needless money on a chest x-ray. I know you guys at the Chamber hate those whiners who always want doctors to order unnecessary medical test. Do you know what the doctor diagnosed as my father's pain? A pulled muscle. Yeah, a pulled muscle. I use to sit on the back of the his chair and paint his back with HEET while he watched Meet-The-Press and Face The Nation. He hated the pain but loved those shows. I suppose the explanation is that it was just one of those things that happen in busy medical practices. My father and mother trusted Doctor Sandstone's judgment and trusted that the Seven Dwarfs weren't lying to the American Congress. At 13 even I knew they were lying.

My guess is that my mother isn't reading these blog posts, especially not today's. Do you know she's never remarried? She's waiting for the day she dies; to be once again with my father. Now that's fringing honesty isn't it Darren McKinney.

Question: Are you really the Communications Director for the ATRA? If so why aren't you talking about at least some of those 17 problems American business experiences with financial wrongdoing?

Answer:

Question: Why does your organization choose instead to pick on those who don't have a private fleet of plane shuffling lobbyists?

Answer:

Question: What is the definition of corporate responsibility used by the ATRA, the Chamber and Big Tobacco?

Answer:

Honesty is an interesting lesson my mother taught me. It's something that Big Tobacco, the Chamber and the ATRA aren't used to speaking.

Question: I'm curious as to why the ATRA's focus is so single minded. Are you able to share that answr with us?

Answer:

American has a lot bigger issues than civil lawsuits but all your organization can talk about is a cup of hot coffee, a pair of lost pants, a goose on the loose, one laptop and a box of cereal.

That's enough for today. Remember Darren leave your comments so I know you're reading this. It wouldn't be polite to not read my responses to your comment. Especially since your bosses took my father's life in exchange for a healthy profit. And make sure you show the board at the next ATRA meeting. I'll meet you back here tomorrow. Until then breathe easy I don't have any more questions.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 19, 2009 (boomark / email).