UP IN SMOKE!

"UP IN SMOKE" : OUR FAIR SHARE The Missouri Supreme Court has heard a great variety of cases of interest to me, including "Dred Scott", and "Lloyd Gaines." But the case having the greatest personal interest to me was the settlement of the cigarette class action suit, brought by a number of state attorneys general, for damages, in which I had unsuccessfully sought to intervene on behalf of my father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, who died from decades of cigarette smoking. My mother, Margie Dean Coleman, was my client. We had sought to piggyback off of the states' efforts to benefit our own circumstances. No one represented the interests of the many individual smokers who had died by reason of the cigarette lobbyists and industry's poisoning. I had sought to represent my father through my mother for that reason. A black circuit judge in St. Louis with a reputation for perspicacity was the first to deny, peremptorily, without a hearing, our motion to intervene on behalf of victims, my daddy especially. I was not totally shocked by the "brother" on the bench, considering the stakes! I would be lying if I were to deny my being, at least, mildly disappointed by his order given such reputation. The Court of Appeals in St. Louis, was more hospitable. There, at least, there was a hearing. There also I was able to speak with my brother Bison from Howard University School of Law, now deceased , Worsham (Chuck) Caldwell. He was representing I am not sure whom, exactly, but he told me that he had paid $50,000 into a pot to be able to participate as co-plaintiffs ' counsel in the State of Missouri's share of the class action cigarette settlements that were led by a well-connected plaintiffs' lawyer out of Springfield , Missouri. The Court of Appeals affirmed the Circuit Court and sent the entire case to the Missouri Supreme Court. There in Jefferson City, our mother was brought to the capital, the Supreme Court, by my younger brother, Stephen M. Coleman, a self-employed securities dealer, who is now also deceased . We were approached by a former Missouri Supreme Court judge, who was then representing one of the multiple parties--maybe the State itself--to shake my hand before the arguments were heard. This is the very same man, mind you, who had sought monetary sanctions, against my mother, our mother, (derivatively me) for having filed our motion to intervene in the billion dollars of settlement money that was just sitting there as liquidity. I rejected this man's imperiously proffered hand as being presumptuously perfidious. In the Supreme Court I again was afforded an opportunity to argue on behalf of my mother, for our father's death by cigarettes in the State of Missouri, whose interest the state had abandoned to benefit itself! Why should it not have used its citizens' years of tax payments and campaign contributions for the families of deceased citizen? But the State opted to keep the billions of dollars for itself and for certain ones that it favored, not for us! The Missouri Supreme Court denied our motion to intervene and denied that motion for sanctions against our mother. So, the state and its emissaries got all of the money. We victims got nothing. But our names are all in legal history for such benefit as it may serve hence. The Show-Me State’s share of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement reached between the tobacco industry and 46 states is roughly $130 million a year for about 20 years or $4.5 billion. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/mo-supreme-court/1342928.html