The complex, protean campaigns of litigation against tobacco producers provide Haltom and McCann a focus whose scope falls between the general concerns of Chapter Five and the single case study emphasis of Chapter Six.  They find that news coverage in the 1990s adapted to plaintiffs’ assertions that "Big Tobacco" had deceived and addicted adolescents and that costs of nicotine addiction were visited upon states and taxpayers, neither of whom had elected to consume tobacco products.  The authors find this eclipse of the traditional "individual responsibility" narrative to have been transient, however, because the very instrumental and institutional advantages discussed in Part One and Part Two respectively were still operating.  The default moral responsibility ethos was given an added boost by increasingly critical media attention to huge fees accruing to attorneys who represented tobacco plaintiffs.  Thus, Chapter Seven shows dramatically why the interplay of ideological, institutional, and instrumental influences often neutralize or overcome efforts to use products liability law to effect permanent reforms.

Questions?  Confusions?  Please contact the authors.