You got that right. A friend I went to school with in Jackson Miss. who became a lawyer went from borrowing money from his folks at age 37 to sending his wife to Tuscany to search for the perfect door for their new digs. All courtesy of the tobbaco suits in Mississippi. Worse yet, he got 14 million and he was only a junior partner and hardly billed any direct hours.
Trent Lott's brother in law Richard Scruggs is at the epicenter of all this tort-extortion run wild.
BTW, the tobbaco suits were won in the state legislatures and Attorney Generals' offices not in the courts.
If you first lose in court, go to the state houses and promise financial incentives and have the statutes changed to your favor and try again. That is exactly what they did.
That is very interesting, but not too suprising, now that I think about it.