Tony Gwynn has been one of the great players in baseball during my lifetime. He also was a lifelong user of smokeless tobacco. He is also dead. Now his family is suing the tobacco industry, alleging negligence and product liability.
What makes this different from other tobacco cases is that Tony G was given the product as a free sample made available to athletes when he was in college. Go back to old footage of games and you will see many athletes chewing and spitting. Was the company negligent? Was he? In California, where the case is filed, the jury will be asked to assign relative responsibility to the company and the decedent. Tough to predict results, but the corny old adage re narcotics – "the first one is free, kid" – appears to be literally applicable here. Then the argument will migrate to more familiar territory, that the product was addictive. I think we are long past the point where a tobacco company can argue to the contrary.
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