Walter Olson's July 18 editorial-page commentary "The Runaway Jury Is No Myth" describes many lines of attack that tobacco lawyers will pursue as they appeal the landmark Engle tobacco verdict. Mr. Olson's uncompromising support of each of the tobacco industry's positions, one more erroneous than the next, leads one to question whether any verdict that would hold the companies responsible for their misconduct would sit well with him.
Readers should critically question his assellion that justice is perverted when lawyers reject biased jurors or that some new constitutional right, "multiple jeopardy," is violated when a civil defendant faces punitive damages on more than one occasion.
As conservatives, Mr. Olson and I would both agree that we do not need more legislative and regulatory interventions in our lives. Yet at the same time, a free society demands that consumers be vigorously protected against those selling dangerous products without due warning.
Why is it that Mr. Olson is not interested in defending this most basic economic right? One would be hard-pressed to come up with a more vivid scenario where a company puts a dangerous product in the marketplace and then fails to warn about the danger. In this case, the manufacturers go further and actively downplay the risks associated with smoking. This verdict is the appropriate way to get Big Tobacco to be responsible corporate citizens and tell the truth about the many dangers of their product.