Tobacco / Smoking

The government is here to help Vapers.

Marijuana may one day be a natural step for Big Tobacco, but that day is a long way off and Big Tobacco's inevitable domination is anything but certain.

Hiring a former FBI agent to work up an investigation has got to be cheaper than hiring a law firm to litigate.

* NO, NO, NO, NOTORIOUS! Previously unpublished documents from the Clinton White House have been released, and it looks like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was criticized for her “laconic” nature. Not cool, Bill. [Legal Times]

* Document review jobs aren’t going anywhere, folks. Exhibit A: Winston & Strawn’s e-discovery practice is bringing in the big bucks, earning the firm more than $20 million in revenue last year. [Capital Business / Washington Post]

* More lawyers are being treated for substance abuse for drugs and alcohol than ever before. In fact, a founding partner of Farella Braun + Martel, one of California’s largest firms, was once a “functioning alcoholic.” [Am Law Daily]

* A Florida jury apparently set on “sending a message” to tobacco companies awarded $23.6 billion in punitive damages to a chain smoker’s widow against RJ Reynolds. That was a costly message. [Reuters]

* June 2014 marked the fewest people who sat for the LSAT in 14 years, but it may get even lower if a new ABA proposal which would allow the test to be waived for 10% of students passes. [Central Florida Future]

* Dan Markel, FSU Law prof, criminal law theorist, and PrawfsBlawg founder, RIP. [Tallahassee Democrat]

No computers, more casual sexual harassment.

What are the flaws of the FDA's proposed regulation of e-cigarettes?

Smoking is bad for you -- and winning massive judgments against tobacco companies can also be hazardous, if you don't pay taxes on the money.

Meet the pro se litigant whose communications are so menacing that a Biglaw firm got a restraining order against him.

Mayor Mommy takes another swipe at cigarette smokers...

Inmates sue alcohol companies, as if they were ever sober enough to read a warning label...

* Chief Justice John Roberts gave a Solicitor General’s Office attorney a vicious tongue-lashing for failure to be upfront about policy changes between presidents. Now that’s what we’d call a verbal benchslap! [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* When asked if they’d be following Cravath’s bonuses, a dozen Am Law 100 firms didn’t even care to respond or discuss the matter. It seems the partners would rather keep their associates squirming with suspense a while longer. [Am Law Daily]

* Watch out, world, because Catholic University of America just hired a Biglaw senior partner to lead its law school. Say hello to Dean Daniel Attridge, formerly managing partner at the D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. [National Law Journal]

* A federal judge ordered tobacco companies to disclose in product warnings that they chemically induce smoking addictions to turn a profit, but those fools will keep puffing their cancer sticks anyway. [WSJ Law Blog]

* This just in from Flori-duh: you know you’re probably going to have a bad day in court when the judge won’t declare a mistrial even though the prosecutor technically wasn’t a member of the state Bar. [Miami Herald]

* You can take our lives, but you can never take our freedom to slowly take our own lives by smoking cigarettes in public! [U.S. Eighth Circuit / FindLaw] * Some humorously sketchy legal advice, courtesy of Reddit. [Associate's Mind] * A Russian in-house attorney got dumped and then allegedly went to work and shot seven people. [ABA Journal] * L.A. County voted to force porn stars to wear condoms during shoots. In other news, the entire porn industry packed up yesterday and moved to… somewhere outside L.A. County. [Legal Blog Watch] * Dean Boland, one of Paul Ceglia’s ex-lawyers, just lost an appeal of a $300K judgment after he allegedly manipulated “photos that depicted minors engaged in sex acts.” [WSJ Law Blog] * Elie says: You’d think that covering up your own extra-marital affairs would be part of the CIA Director entrance exam. [New York Times]

Veterans of the tobacco wars are gearing up to file lawsuits against the food industry. What types of claims are these suits making?

There comes a point when you can have too many Cuban cigars. This attorney may have crossed that line…

* This guy gets an A for imagination, but he fails the whole “How do you not realize that emergency dispatch will not send you a ride to go on a beer run, even if you call 911 nine times” test. [WCTI12] * You know you’re addicted to cigarettes when you’ll smoke cigarettes that were hidden in a baby’s diaper. Then again, smoking already involves inhaling something covered in s**t. [Legal Juice] * If you think tenants should get screwed because of a landlord who can’t pay his bills, you’re probably a horrible landlord. [The Consumerist] * A 49-year-old attorney is charged with sexually assaulting a 24-year-old woman in her room at the Chicago W Hotel. Bad news Bears. Seriously, ugh. [Chicago Tribune] * Just give me all the foreclosed homes you have. Wait, wait. I worry what you just heard was ‘give me a lot of foreclosed homes.’ What I said was: Give me all the foreclosed homes you have. Do you understand? [My Fox Detroit via Legal Blog Watch] * Whoever produces public-service announcements forgot that not only are drugs bad but so is a propensity toward violent anger. One could argue the latter is more likely to land you in jail. Either way, hilarious. [Buzz Feed]

* It’s time for the Supreme Court to sound off on the battle over women’s wombs, and you know it’s bad when even a sitting justice calls it “a mess.” Can a child conceived after a parent’s death receive survivor benefits? [CNN]

* Disgusting health warning pictures on cigarette packaging and advertising: now constitutional according to the Sixth Circuit. Maybe this will inspire people to quit a habit that’s almost equally as disgusting. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* When Biglaw is involved, so is big money. Say “aloha” to the largest personal injury settlement in Hawaii’s history. The state will pay $15.4M over the hiking death of Gibson Dunn partner Elizabeth Brem. [Am Law Daily]

* A lawsuit filed against fashionista Alexander Wang over his alleged “sweatshop” has been discontinued, and not because there isn’t a case, but because the lawyers on either side have major beef. [New York Magazine]

* The Better Business Bureau has moved to dismiss a Florida law firm’s suit over its “F” grade. Because sometimes the truth hurts, but that doesn’t mean you can sue over it if you don’t like it. [Orlando Sentinel]

* The biggest bimbo from Wisteria Lane gets screwed again, but this time in court. A mistrial has been declared in Nicollette Sheridan’s lawsuit against the producers of “Desperate Housewives.” [Reuters]

* A federal judge tossed out a law requiring tobacco companies to put graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. If paying $7 a pack doesn’t stop you from buying smokes, I don’t think nasty photos will either. [CNN]

* SCOTUS won’t deal with Arizona’s controversial immigration law for a couple months, but the 11th Circuit will hear oral arguments about Alabama’s even stricter law today. But why would you immigrate to Alabama, of all places? Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* The Seventh Circuit ruled that police can search a cellphone for its number without a warrant. Judge Richard Posner compared it to law enforcement’s ability to open a pocket diary and copy the owner’s address. The bigger question is: do drug dealers keep diaries? [Wall Street Journal]

* James Murdoch, the News Corp. heir apparent, has resigned in the wake of the News of the World scandal and related lawsuits. Now everyone can just go back to reading British tabloids for the Page Three Girls. [Los Angeles Times]

* RIP Lynn D. “Buck” Compton, the prosecutor who secured a conviction of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, and the Army paratrooper portrayed in the book and HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers.” [Washington Post]

When you stop smoking, the cigarettes don’t get together to figure out how to kill you anyway. — Benjamin Wittes, on a panel at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, responding to the observation that smoking and traffic accidents cause more deaths in a year than 9/11. (Julian Sanchez discusses what the web […]

* Sammy Alito and the roots of a compassionate constitutional conservatism. By Emily Bazelon. Foreblurb by Juggalo Law. [New York Times] * A U.S. vulture fund is having problems collecting a certain debt from the Democratic Republic of Congo via certain chinamen. Yes, I know that’s not the preferred nomenclature. But these men actually do […]

As regular readers know, this is usually the time of year I go to Vegas, blow my bonus, and come back to work a week later angrier than ever. Well, this year, it’s going to be different. Oh, don’t worry, when I return to Above the Law’s pages on March 14th, I’m sure I’ll be […]