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• Jill Burcum: Breathe deeply and ponder this anniversary 

It had all the elements of a John Grisham novel: a crack legal team filing a long-shot lawsuit, a behemoth defendant peddling cancer-causing products, secret stashes of incriminating documents, and a mind-boggling, multibillion-dollar settlement. Yet Minnesota's landmark tobacco case was a real-life legal thriller. Ten years ago today, after a dramatic trial in St. Paul, the state settled with the nation's tobacco companies for more than $6 billion.

As Minnesota's sesquicentennial approaches, we're marking 150 years of statehood with wagon trains and faded photos of early settlers. But the 10-year milestone of the tobacco settlement reminds us that the state's more-recent history also offers much to celebrate, including the risk-taking legal pioneers who beat Big Tobacco. The Minnesota case not only paved the way for other states to settle, but blew once and for all the industry's smokescreen on how much it knew about the dangers of its own products.

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