Special Edition: Florida's Cigarette Victory (continued)
Making Big Tobacco Pay the Damages
Lining Up The Troops
By the time we reached this stage of the case, some of us were spending most of our time in Palm Beach where the Trial Team had rented a huge block of rooms in the Brazilian Court hotel and converted them to our operating headquarters. Five or six of us had permanent rooms in the hotel that had become our home and office. We had a full staff of paralegals living in the hotel, plus copiers, faxes, our own telephone lines and intercom system, a library, our own kitchen, messengers, cars and airplanes totally at our disposal. When we got within a month of the trial, the Brazilian Court office was operating 24 hours a day. Many nights, we would have motions noticed for the next morning slipped under our door at 4 a.m., some four or five hours prior to the hearing. Every week, we would rotate part of the staff back to their hometown to be with their families and bring in an alternate staff for the next week, rotating the staff again at the end of the following week. As the trial approached, the logistics of the case became especially complicated for me because the judge had ordered that discovery would remain open and continuing beyond the starting day of the trial. This meant that not only did I have my pre-trial and trial responsibilities in Palm Beach, but I also had to keep the discovery process running smoothly in Tallahassee.
As Judge Cohen originally ordered, jury selection began on August 4, 1997. Prior to this time there had in fact been some talk of settlement but it was obvious to us that the “talk” was nothing more than a diversion. Governor Chiles let the Tobacco Industry know early on that he would only discuss a financial settlement after the Industry agreed to certain non-economic settlement terms, such as removal of all Tobacco billboards in Florida. The Industry continually refused to even consider a settlement containing such provisions. In order to avoid becoming sidetracked with settlement talks, we assigned one of our Team members to handle settlement discussions and told him not to bother us unless something significant occurred. This is not an unusual procedure and we often do the same thing within our office. This prevents the attorney scheduled to try the case from being distracted by settlement talk when he should be preparing for the trial. Consequently, unknown to the Team as a whole, settlement negotiations began in the weeks preceding jury selection, but Governor Chiles told Tobacco not to bother him again until they did something to convince him they were serious about the non-economic factors. Shortly thereafter, Joe Camel became history when he was officially retired by his creator, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Unknown to us, the retirement of Joe Camel was a signal to Governor Chiles that the Tobacco Industry was ready to negotiate on his terms.
During the second week of jury selection, we were all requested to meet with the Governor for dinner at the home of one of the Trial Team members in Palm Beach. None of us had an inkling of what was to come, and some of us, myself included, were upset that we would be pulled into what we all thought would be a “rah-rah” meeting so the Governor could give us moral support. The Governor had been good about meeting with us regularly throughout the case; however at this point, in the middle of jury selection and trial, we really were not interested in pep rallies.
