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Impersonating The Legislature: State Attorneys General And Parens Patriae Product Litigation, Donald G. Gifford
Impersonating The Legislature: State Attorneys General And Parens Patriae Product Litigation, Donald G. Gifford
Donald G Gifford
The state attorney general has emerged during the past decade as a “super plaintiff” in state parens patriae litigation against manufacturers of cigarettes, automobiles, lead paint, and pharmaceuticals. Attorneys general sue on behalf of their states as the collective plaintiff, seeking reimbursement for the costs of treating or preventing product-caused diseases suffered by individual residents, even though such individual victims would not themselves be able to recover as plaintiffs. More importantly, they seek to supplant the regulatory regimes previously enacted by Congress, the state legislature, or federal agencies with one that reflects their own visions. This Article traces how state …
Suing The Tobacco And Lead Pigment Industries: Government Litigation As Public Health Prescription, Donald G. Gifford
Suing The Tobacco And Lead Pigment Industries: Government Litigation As Public Health Prescription, Donald G. Gifford
Donald G Gifford
In Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries, legal scholar Donald G. Gifford recounts the transformation of tort litigation in response to the challenge posed by victims of 21st-century public health crises who seek compensation from the product manufacturers. Class action litigation promised a strategy for documenting collective harm, but an increasingly conservative judicial and political climate limited this strategy. Then, in 1995, Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore initiated a parens patriae action on behalf of the state against cigarette manufacturers. Forty-five other states soon filed public product liability actions, seeking both compensation for the funds spent on public health …