John Robinson

John Robinson, Esq. is a California plaintiffs' attorney.

= Biography =

John Robinson is an attorney in California. He filed the Brown and Sutton cases against the tobacco industry with George Kilbourne.(J.M. Jordan memo 4/29/88) He also filed Fleming I, Fleming II, Monthei, Quandt, Shrum, Whitner, Chidester, Daffron, Dever and Gillespie suits against the tobacco companies. All were apparently voluntarily dismissed circa 1988.(J.M. Jordan memo 4/29/88)

John Robinson was the subject of the famous "Son of a Bitch" memo written by J. Michael Jordan, an outside lawyer for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1988. Jordan wrote an April 29, 1988 memo to "S&H [Smoking & Health] Attorneys" describing the dismissal of suits against the tobacco companies by plaintiffs' attorney John Robinson, and the tobacco companies' litigation strategy.


 * [T]he aggressive posture we have taken regarding depositions and discovery in general, continues to make these cases extremely burdensome and expensive for plaintiffs' lawyers, particularly sole practitioners. To paraphrase General Patton, the way we won these cases was not by spending all of Reynolds' money, but by making that other son of a bitch spend all his.(WSJ 2/11/93; J.M. Jordan memo 4/29/88).

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