Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

Author:Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780804139120
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-07T14:00:00+00:00

“It sounded like a fool’s mission. It wasn’t that I thought necessarily that we’d win,” Moore told us. “I thought we could file the case and tell the American public the truth, and expose the industry’s big lies: that cigarettes don’t cause cancer, that nicotine is not an addictive drug, and that they don’t market to children. I knew I was doing something for the right reason.” Moore knew it would be a long, hard legal haul with little hope of victory. Nonetheless, they filed the suit on May 23, 1994, and held a press conference to tell the tobacco industry point-blank: “You caused the health crisis, you pay for it.” He was immediately ridiculed by Mississippi’s Republican governor. Then he was ordered not to spend a single penny of taxpayer money on the litigation, or use any members of his staff on the case. When he asked the federal government to join in the suit, he was told he didn’t have a case. The message from both state and federal government, and the tobacco industry, was loud and clear: you’re on your own.

“At our first hearing, it was the three of us and sixty-three lawyers from the tobacco companies,” Moore recalls. “That’s when I knew: I gotta build a bigger team.” He began approaching other state attorneys general in search of allies. By the end of 1994, three states had become part of the suit. By 1996, there were seventeen on board. Tobacco industry lobbyists responded with their own campaign. Moore started getting hate mail from farmers and Chambers of Commerce all over the country. “I absolutely thought I could lose my career.” But the lawyers taking on the tobacco industry were determined. One of the co-counsels, Moore remembers, drained his savings and mortgaged his house to help fund the fight; Big Tobacco, meanwhile, was spending an estimated $600 million a year defending itself. Although it took four exhausting years, Moore ultimately triumphed, when Big Tobacco agreed to a settlement totaling hundreds of billions of dollars to forty-six states, the District of Columbia, and five US territories in the Master Settlement Agreement. (The other states, including Mississippi, brokered separate agreements.)

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