A lot of people are dying of cancer. —Grady Carter, August 9, 1996 It’s hard for me to understand why this hasn’t occurred sooner. —Samuel Gaskins, retired postal-service supervisor and foreman of the Florida jury that found Brown & Williamson guilty of negligence THE PHONE CALL from the courthouse came in midafternoon. The jury had reached a verdict. On any other such day, Woody Wilner, a winsome, middle-aged lawyer in Jacksonville, Florida, might have mounted his shocking pink bicycle, stashed his court papers in the front basket, and peddled the four blocks, mostly downhill, from his law office to the Duval County Circuit Court. He had made this journey hundreds of times in the last twenty years. But August 9, 1996, would be different. Wilner’s career was at a turning point; so was the Third Wave of tobacco litigation. The jury had been deliberating for more than a day on a claim for damages by Wilner’s client, Grady Carter, against the tobacco company Brown & Williamson.
