A Sociolegal History of the Tobacco Tort Litigation

Abstract

Nostalgia buffs hold the 1950s in especially high regard. It is generally thought to be the last decade of America's innocence-a period of relative quiescence in which political activism was at a low ebb. Post-war industrial growth had brought unprecedented economic prosperity, but misgivings about the costs of the new affluence-the development of a refined sensitivity to health and safety concerns that would strongly influence popular attitudes beginning in the next decade-had yet to arise.l Tort law, on the whole, mirrored these cultural themes. By the late 1960s, what would be heralded as a revolution in products law had begun, reflected in the adoption of strict liability for defective products.2 Spurred on by a newly emerging concern about toxic exposures and a broader-based rise in claims consciousness on the part of the public, tort awards and tort doctrine were swept up in a period of legal turbulence that