Too many U.S. corporations make merchandise that hurt public well being: oil producers, opioid makers, vape outfits and tobacco giants to call a number of. For too lengthy, we as a society have considered the sale of those merchandise as routine. We have accepted that corporations aggressively market a lethal product as a result of that’s what profitable companies do.

And too typically, these massive companies go about their nefarious enterprise with close to impunity. Legislation and regulation are tamed by lobbying and regulatory seize. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed to power tobacco corporations to decrease the quantity of nicotine of their cigarettes to make them non-addictive. The business is resisting, making ready to litigate and will achieve blocking the measure — if not in courtroom, then by deft political maneuvers.

So, how will we cease this relentless pursuit of earnings with out regard to public well being? While companies typically view lawsuits as the price of doing enterprise, huge public-health litigation with actual enamel — that means massive punitive-damage awards from juries — is the one factor that will get their consideration. Verdicts awarding massive sums in damages ship a message to shareholders and the general public that the merchandise these corporations produce and their destructive affect should not socially acceptable. And as a result of the timing and quantity of punitive awards are unpredictable, corporations can not simply funds for them as a value of doing enterprise.

Consider the litigation against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) over the talc in its child powder, which was sometimes contaminated with asbestos. For years, J&J appeared to comply with the tobacco playbook, downplaying the public-health consequences of its product. Yet, earlier this 12 months, after a multibillion greenback punitive-damages award, the company announced that it could change from talc-based to corn-starch-based child powder worldwide. The litigation stopped the misbehavior.

And take into account one other instance. Recently, attorneys from the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, the place I work, joined with two non-public regulation companies to characterize the household of Barbara Ellen Fontaine, who died of most cancers at age 60 after smoking for greater than 4 a long time. In September, a Massachusetts jury ordered Philip Morris USA to pay more than $8 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages for inflicting Fontaine’s lung most cancers and demise. It was the primary billion-dollar punitive-damage verdict within the state’s historical past. This verdict, which Philip Morris called “clearly excessive” and vowed to struggle, has clearly gotten the corporate’s consideration.

Fontaine turned hooked when she was simply 15. The firm may have lowered nicotine ranges to make its merchandise non-addictive a long time in the past. Instead, it went on making deadly cigarettes — regardless of figuring out cigarettes kill about half a million Americans every year. As argued in Fontaine’s case, she smoked Marlboro and Parliament cigarettes, which Philip Morris nonetheless sells with principally the identical formulations it used when she smoked them — the corporate has not made them safer.

But if punitive-damage awards are to have the specified affect on company misconduct, they have to be supported by the general public in opposition to their inevitable company critics. Corporations argue that naive jurors are being manipulated and duped. Yet, the jury within the Fontaine case was extremely educated and included, amongst others, a Ph.D., a Ph.D. candidate, a microbiologist and a banker. They heard how deeply addictive nicotine is, that Philip Morris made its merchandise to feed habit and that it’s nonetheless doing so right now.

Another criticism is that punitive-damage awards are merely a windfall for suing events. Or, because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued recently, that such awards harm the companies — and by extension our financial system and society. True, punitive awards do hurt some corporations — people who proceed to misbehave. But they assist our financial system, by decreasing preventable medical prices and misplaced productiveness, whereas making our society more healthy.

If we’re going to alter company actions that injury public well being, we’d like punitive awards that trigger company miscreants to take a seat up and take discover. Multibillion-dollar corporations can merely shrug off six- or seven-figure verdicts — however not so a ten-figure verdict.

In these instances, juries are allowed to — and, in my opinion, should — take into account an organization’s wealth when imposing punitive awards. In the Fontaine case, the jurors took a wholly rational strategy to discovering an quantity that might each “punish and deter” Philip Morris. Indeed, punitive-damage awards in public-health instances are a option to change unhealthy company conduct. They don’t tear down our society, they make it higher.

Richard A. Daynard is president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. He can be the college distinguished professor of regulation at Northeastern University.