[SirClintonPortis]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

Did they? Probably not. Would it have changed their decision? Probably not.



If I'm correct, people that smoked their whole lives won major lawsuits against the tobacco industry even though there wasn't any evidence at the time of lung cancer and smoking. (or that I know of)

Highly unlikely if your "just a guy" or "group of guys" doing the suing and the lawsuit was filed in the early 90s or before . The following article was written in 2000.
A Tobacco Lawsuit Primer - Slate Magazine

Individual smokers. Smokers have been suing tobacco companies since the 1950s. Until recently, they have been almost entirely unsuccessful--mainly because tobacco companies argued effectively that smoking is a personal choice and that people have known of its harmful side effects for years. That argument is proving less effective these days as plaintiffs produce documents proving that cigarette makers have known all along their product is addictive. The next logical inference--if cigarettes are addictive, then people don't choose to smoke them--has led to a couple of multimillion-dollar jury awards in recent months. In February, a California jury ordered Philip Morris to pay $51.5 million to a woman who said she developed inoperable lung cancer from smoking, and a month later, a state jury in Oregon awarded $81 million to the family of a man who smoked Marlboro cigarettes for 40 years before his death. Both awards were cut in half by the trial judges, and the cases are still on appeal.
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Groups of many smokers. Class-action suits are brought by a few plaintiffs on behalf of many. In Miami, three plaintiffs sued Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, the Liggett Group, and Brown & Williamson on behalf of as many as 500,000 addicted Floridians who suffer from certain smoking-related illnesses. Estimates suggest that various cigarette makers currently face as many as 125 similar suits across the country. Big Tobacco has been quite successful defending against these lawsuits; in 1995, for example, a federal appeals court threw out one class-action suit filed on behalf of more than 100 million smokers nationwide.

The tobacco industry was dealt a huge death blow when Jeffery Wigand decided to come out and talk about the details on how cigarettes were addictive and the like. Getting him to talk wasn't easy, as he experienced much coercion to stay silent. And the whole ordeal wrecked his personal life in the process.