Back on Friday, January 03, 2003, I posted about Senator Bill Frist. He's not from Wisconsin and not a Wisconsin personal injury lawyer, but he's a man that Wisconsin medical patients may soon know about if they are ever injured by a Wisconsin doctor's negligence or by a dangerous medical device or now by a vaccine causing wrongful death or brain damage to a child.

You may recall that Bill Frist is the Tennessee Senator heart surgeon presently in charge of Senate Republicans. Frist is quickly becoming the Darth Vader of PATIENTS' rights and the political pawn of the pharmaceutical/medical industries. His most recent escapade is thoroughly documented in the Tuesday, March 25, 2003 post at Wampum, which has earned itself a link to this Blog as a result of the author's outstanding advocacy on behalf of patients and Autism.

Anyone who has their children vaccinated, which includes myself with three young ones under 8, better take a look at that Tuesday, March 25, 2003 post at Wampum and take action. It should be obvious now to all advocates of patients' rights, Wisconsin attorneys and personal injury attorneys everywhere that Frist is going to do everything in his power to pay back ("PAY FOR PLAY") the hundreds of millions of dollars he took from the pharmaceutical/medical industries. With this newest bill and the medical malpractice bill he's working to ram through Congress, he certainly doesn't care one bit about medical patients and their ability to obtain justice if they fall prey to physician negligence, hazardous products, dangerous medical devices, or vaccines causing wrongful death or brain damage to children.

March 21, 2002, an Illinois Circuit Court Judge (NO JURY involved) awarded $10.1 billion in damages against Altria Group, formerly known as Phillip Morris. It was not a personal injury case or even a products liability or strict liability case. Rather, it was a civil fraud case. The corporate insurance defense lawyers spin described the case as dealing with "a group of smokers who claim no injury, smoked cigarettes that were always labeled with government health warnings and continue to purchase Marlboro Lights despite the claims in the case." See Phillip Morris' Press Release. Whereas, the plaintiffs attorneys alleged that Phillip Morris violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act with regard to Marlboro "Lights" and the evidence was that Phillip Morris lied - big surprise - to the American public and Illinois residents in advertising claiming "light" cigarettes were safer than standard cigarettes.

Now I'm just a Wisconsin personal injury attorney, but in my humble opinion, the damages awarded will be reduced either by Illinois courts or the U.S. Supreme Court, more likely the former. Though it's only about 15% of what Phillip Morris is worth, $10,100,000,000.00 is an insane amount of money.