Targeted By Historians, Sugar Industry May Face Litigation Risk

It has become a common practice in recent years for academic historians (and others moonlighting as such) to mine troves of consumer product industry documents in search of "bad" corporate behavior. Perhaps most notably, Dr. Robert Proctor, a Stanford University historian of science, dove deeply into the tobacco industry's documents and published several articles and books over recent years regarding alleged misbehavior by cigarette companies; Dr. David Egilman of Brown University has done the same with regard to the asbestos industry. These same historians also have appeared as experts for plaintiffs in product liability litigation against tobacco and asbestos defendants, and have been rewarded millions in fees for doing so. So it is no surprise that still more historians have gone fishing for something titillating in corporate documents from yet another long-established industry -- this time, sugar.