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How To Testify At Your Own Wrongful Death Trial at Age 49 

If you smoke in the latter half of the 20th Century, you'll have a good chance at "being there" for your posthumous day in court at the beginning of the 21st Century. Pay close attention, now. Be sure to keep good records along the way, just to be sure that you'll have enough evidence to go to court in the first place. It's going to be a hurdle obtaining decades-old records. So get those empty folders ready. Be certain to request certified records from your health care providers every now and then, and always question them about the exact date of your diagnosis. Courts can be very finiky about lapses of time. Any your attorney will be "hog-tied" and unable to proceed on your behalf, if there's no available documented evidence.

That's what Big Tobacco should have told their consumers right from day one. But Big Tobacco was too busy cooking up the decades of deception that produced unsuspecting candidates, like Jean Connor, for posthumous testimony.

Jean Connor was a consummate chain smoker, the first witness to testify at her wrongful death trial. She testified in an hour-long videotaped testimony in 1997. That was two years after Jean had died at age 49 of lung cancer. And Lance Burton wasn't even present in the courtroom to wave a magic wand to make it all happen. Jean became hooked on cigarettes sometime in 1960 at the age of 14, and she never looked back.

(At trial, Big Tobacco's attorneys got to do something that Jean couldn't do, watch her video. . . .

At age 49, Jean had lost her battle to live, and in 1997 Jean's estate had lost at trial, but it seems clear that in the future...

There ought to be a penalty.

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