Headquarters | Crown Center Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. |
---|---|
No. of offices | 17 |
No. of attorneys | 500+ |
No. of employees | 1,400 |
Major practice areas | Product liability, tort, business litigation, intellectual property, environmental and toxic tort, labor, and employment |
Key people | Madeleine M. McDonough, Chair [1] |
Revenue | $353.52 M (2019) [2] |
Date founded | 1889 |
Founder | Frank P. Sebree [3] |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Website | shb |
Shook, Hardy & Bacon (SHB), L.L.P. (previously Shook, Hardy, Ottman, Mitchell and Bacon) is a U.S. law firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2012, The National Law Journal ranked the firm as the 87th largest in the United States. [4] The firm has offices in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston. [5]
The firm is notable for its representation of five of the six major U.S. tobacco companies, and for its involvement in hiding the health risks of tobacco. [6] [7] The firm inspired the fictional firm of Smoot, Hawking in the satirical novel Thank You for Smoking. [7]
SHB also has represented pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly and Company, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Guidant, and Wyeth. [3] In 2007, Shook won a $69.5 million verdict on behalf of client Sprint Nextel, against Vonage. [8] William H. Colby, an attorney at the firm, represented Nancy Cruzan (by way of her parents) in the right-to-die case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health , as part of Shook's pro bono work. [9]
The firm has represented five of the six major U.S. tobacco companies: American Brands, Brown & Williamson, RJR Nabisco, Philip Morris Inc. (now Altria Group) and Loews Inc.; a 1992 New York Times article about the firm is titled "'Tobacco' Its Middle Name, Law Firm Thrives, for Now". [6]
In 1992, a federal judge all but accused the firm of orchestrating fraud on behalf of the tobacco industry and exerting attorney–client privilege to hide facts about tobacco's health hazards during the 1960s and 1970s. [6]
According to Brown & Williamson whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, SHB coached staff at the tobacco company on language that downplayed the health risks of tobacco. [10]
In 2019, the firm launched its cannabis practice to address regulatory, employment, and litigation matters. [11]
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any warm, moist environment, which means it can be farmed on all continents except Antarctica.
The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) is an American tobacco manufacturing company based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and headquartered at the RJR Plaza Building. Founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1875, it is the second-largest tobacco company in the United States. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American, after merging with the U.S. operations of British American Tobacco in 2004.
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was a U.S. tobacco company and a subsidiary of multinational British American Tobacco that produced several popular cigarette brands. It became infamous as the focus of investigations for chemically enhancing the addictiveness of cigarettes. Its former vice-president of research and development, Jeffrey Wigand, was the whistleblower in an investigation conducted by CBS news program 60 Minutes, an event that was dramatized in the film The Insider (1999). Wigand claimed that B&W had introduced chemicals such as ammonia into cigarettes to increase nicotine delivery and increase addictiveness.
A vaporizer or vaporiser, colloquially known as a vape, is a device used to vaporize substances for inhalation. Plant substances can be used, commonly cannabis, tobacco, or other herbs or blends of essential oil. However, they are most commonly filled with a combination propylene glycol, glycerin, and drugs such as nicotine or tetrahydrocannabinol as a liquid solution.
Candy cigarettes are a candy introduced in the late 19th century made out of chalky sugar, bubblegum or chocolate, wrapped in paper and packaged and branded so as to resemble cigarettes. Some products contain powdered sugar hidden in the wrapper, allowing the user to blow into the cigarette and produce a cloud of sugar that imitates smoke, which comes out of the other end.
The economy of the Kansas City metropolitan area is anchored by Kansas City, Missouri, which is the largest city in the state and the 37th largest in the United States. The Kansas City metropolitan area is the 27th largest in the United States, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 population estimates. The metro's economy is large and influential to its region.
Cannabis smoking is the inhalation of smoke or vapor released by heating the flowers, leaves, or extracts of cannabis and releasing the main psychoactive chemical, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is absorbed into the bloodstream via the lungs. Archaeological evidence indicates cannabis with high levels of THC was being smoked at least 2,500 years ago. As of 2021, cannabis is the most commonly consumed federally illegal drug in the United States, with 36.4 million people consuming it monthly.
Jolie L. Justus is an American lawyer and politician from Missouri. A Democrat, she was a member of the Missouri State Senate representing the 10th Senatorial District in Kansas City, serving as the Missouri Senate Minority Leader in her final two years.
A hookah lounge is an establishment where patrons share shisha from a communal hookah or from one placed at each table or a bar.
A menthol cigarette is a cigarette infused with the compound menthol which imparts a “minty” flavor to the smoke. Menthol also decreases irritant sensations from nicotine by desensitizing receptors, making smoking feel less harsh compared to regular cigarettes. Some studies have suggested that they are more addictive. Menthol cigarettes are just as hard to quit and are just as harmful as regular cigarettes.
Smoking is a practice in which a substance is combusted and the resulting smoke is typically inhaled to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream of a person. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have been rolled with a small rectangle of paper into an elongated cylinder called a cigarette. Other forms of smoking include the use of a smoking pipe or a bong.
100 North Tampa, formerly known as the Regions Building and the AmSouth Building, is a skyscraper in Tampa, Florida, USA. Rising to a height of 579 feet (176 m) and 42 floors in Downtown Tampa, the structure currently stands as the tallest building in Tampa and the twenty-sixth-tallest building in Florida. 100 North Tampa was designed by the HKS, Inc. architectural firm, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The building, an example of postmodern architecture, holds offices for Regions Bank, the American International Group, Yara, North America, KPMG, and law firms Holland & Knight and Turkel, Cuva, & Barrios.
In the United States, cigarettes are taxed at both the federal and state levels, in addition to any state and local sales taxes and local cigarette-specific taxes. Cigarette taxation has appeared throughout American history and is still a contested issue today.
Tobacco politics refers to the politics surrounding the use and distribution of tobacco.
The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in the Americas in shamanistic rituals. With the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco quickly spread. The modernization of farming equipment and manufacturing increased the availability of cigarettes following the reconstruction era in the United States. Mass production quickly expanded the scope of consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s.
Tobacco control is a field of international public health science, policy and practice dedicated to addressing tobacco use and thereby reducing the morbidity and mortality it causes. Since most cigarettes and cigars and hookahs contain/use tobacco, tobacco control also concerns these. E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco itself, but (often) do contain nicotine. Tobacco control is a priority area for the World Health Organization (WHO), through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. References to a tobacco control movement may have either positive or negative connotations, depending upon the commentator.
Steven C. Parrish is a C-Suite executive consultant, American lawyer, Chair Safe Horizon, and community volunteer. Until 2008, he was an executive for Altria Group Inc. where he was a Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is a federal statute in the United States that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on June 22, 2009. The Act gives the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate the tobacco industry. A signature element of the law imposes new warnings and labels on tobacco packaging and their advertisements, with the goal of discouraging minors and young adults from smoking. The Act also bans flavored cigarettes, places limits on the advertising of tobacco products to minors and requires tobacco companies to seek FDA approval for new tobacco products.
SmokinginCanada is banned in indoor public spaces, public transit facilities and workplaces, by all territories and provinces, and by the federal government. As of 2010, legislation banning smoking within each of these jurisdictions is mostly consistent, despite the separate development of legislation by each jurisdiction. Notable variations between the jurisdictions include: whether, and in what circumstances ventilated smoking rooms are permitted; whether, and up to what distance away from a building is smoking banned outside of a building; and, whether smoking is banned in private vehicles occupied by children.
The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer. Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.