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For tobacco interests, the touchiest issue in the endgame was the specter of document disclosure. They are still subject to lawsuits, and feared the prospect of turning their research files into a plaintiffs' library. Instead, the industry agreed to fund a repository in Washington where it will deposit a mountain of documents: all information relating to health, toxicity, addiction and marketing to minors; and all documents produced for the state suits. Documents for which industry officials have claimed attorney-client privilege will be subject to a review process before a three-judge panel.
A final hang-up to the agreement had to do with disclosure of another sort: the attorneys general demanded an end to further industry prosecution of whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, the former Brown & Williamson executive who wielded company documents to help press his claim that the tobacco company had deliberately manipulated nicotine levels. Wigand, now a high school science teacher, becomes free to make whatever public statements he wants.
No one would have predicted such a swift outcome back in March, when this all began with the obvious but startling admission by one of the smallest tobacco companies, Liggett Group, that cigarettes are addictive and have been pointedly marketed at kids for years. The confession signaled the first real break from the industry's see-no-evil posture. Reportedly, the event prompted North Carolina Governor James Hunt to call his friend Bill Clinton. The White House then got in touch with Mississippi's Moore to ask if talks with the industry might prove productive.
Eventually, Moore found himself talking to a fellow lawyer--RJR's CEO Steven Goldstone, who before taking over the company was its general counsel and a litigator at the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Negotiated settlements were not unknown to him, and Moore had made it clear that the talks could not proceed without tobacco's top officers. Goldstone soon persuaded Philip Morris CEO Geoffrey Bible to have a sit-down with the opposition.
Serious negotiations began soon thereafter, as the parties moved through one marathon session after the next, taking the talks on the road from New York City to Chicago to Washington. Almost from Day One, the talks threatened to break up over any one of the three most contentious issues: punitive damages, document disclosure and government oversight of tobacco products. The first signs of serious trouble struck April 21, when Manhattan attorney Herbert Wachtell, leading the squadron of tobacco-company lawyers, demanded, "There has to be an end to the vilification." When Harshbarger calmly responded that there would be no blanket immunity for tobacco interests, recalls a participant, "you could feel the air go out of the room."
In the final week, the negotiations spread chaotically over the Park Hyatt and ANA hotels, across 24th Street in downtown Washington. At any given time, half a dozen working subgroups were meeting in conference rooms scattered around the hotel buildings. Smaller clusters of players from each side accumulated in the halls. Moore--"tough, decisive, the dominant figure," a participant called him--meandered through these scattered legal islands like his state's namesake river, picking up information and providing his judgments.