I led the US lawsuit against big tobacco for its harmful lies. Big oil is next | Sharon Y Eubanks

We may be approaching a legal tipping point for fossil fuel companies and the spin masters that work for them

In 2005, I was the lead counsel on behalf of the US in one of the biggest corporate accountability legal actions ever filed. That trial proved that the tobacco industry knew it was selling and marketing a harmful product, that it had funded denial of public health science, and had used deceptive advertising and PR to protect assets instead of protecting consumers.

Today, the fossil fuel industry finds itself in the same precarious legal position as the tobacco industry did in the late 1990s. The behaviour and goals of the tobacco and petroleum industries are pretty similar - and there are many similarities in their liabilities.

Sharon Y Eubanks served as lead council in the federal tobacco litigation United States v Philip Morris USA, et al. She is the co-author of Bad Acts: The Racketeering Case Against the Tobacco Industry