Judge Gladys Kessler's scorn for the tobacco industry was evident in her 1,742-page opinion last week, which found that nine cigarette manufacturers and two trade groups had conspired to hide the truth about smoking's adverse health consequences for more than 50 years.
Her wrath, though, was directed not only at company executives at the forefront of the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry but also at the lawyers she said aided the decades-long project to illegally shade the industry from scrutiny.
"At every stage, lawyers played an absolutely central role in the creation and perpetuation of the Enterprise and the implementation of its fraudulent schemes," the D.C. federal judge wrote. She pointed to how both in-house counsel and outside law firms "devised" and "coordinated" strategy, directed scientists' research in favor of the industry, destroyed documents and "took shelter behind baseless assertions of attorney client privilege."