Cornered
“—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IT BEGAN with a drink in a Manhattan bar and ended, three months later, with the first breach in the tobacco industry’s united front. At the end of November 1995, Don Barrett had left his rural redoubt in Lexington, Mississippi, to fight a liability case in New York about defective plastic-plumbing systems. Most of America’s mobile homes had been fitted with plastic pipes that were corroded by chlorine. “It was the world’s only biodegradable plumbing system,” said ...Barrett. The case was settled for over a billion dollars and Barrett was on the winning team. He was celebrating by having a cocktail with a New York lawyer named Marc Kasowitz, who had represented the plastic pipe company.
“Here was a streetwise, fast-talking New York Jewish lawyer having a drink with a slow-talking, slow-thinking Mississippian,” was how Barrett would begin the story. “He asked me what I was going to do next and I said that if and when I ever got paid for the plumbing case, I would use the money to feed my cigarette habit.MoreLess
“Here was a streetwise, fast-talking New York Jewish lawyer having a drink with a slow-talking, slow-thinking Mississippian,” was how Barrett would begin the story. “He asked me what I was going to do next and I said that if and when I ever got paid for the plumbing case, I would use the money to feed my cigarette habit.MoreLess
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