Published in 1996, The Runaway Jury came out during a highly contentious period for the tobacco industry and tort law. The first smoker to win a trial, according to the American Museum of Tort Law, was Rose Cipollone, a woman who began smoking as a teenager in 1942 (Torres Burtka, Allison. “The Tobacco Cases.” The American Museum of Tort Law, 2 Apr. 2023). Cipollone and her husband began suing the company that manufactured Cipollone’s preferred brand of cigarettes in 1984, shortly before Cipollone died of lung cancer at the age of 58. In 1988, a jury awarded Cipollone’s husband $400,000 because before 1966, the cigarette company failed to put any warnings about the dangers of smoking on its products. The verdict was appealed in 1992, but the case forced tobacco companies to admit that they knew about the dangers of smoking prior to the Surgeon General’s first warning in 1964 and tried to hide the truth from consumers.

In 1998, two years after the publication of The Runaway Jury, the attorney generals of 46 states and the District of Columbia, as well as other jurisdictions, sued cigarette manufacturers for reimbursement for the cost to the taxpayers of caring for people with smoking-related illnesses (Torres Burtka). The five major tobacco companies reached a “master settlement agreement,” which settled the litigation for an estimated $206 billion over the first 25 years. This settlement was important for numerous reasons. It uncovered tobacco company documents proving that companies knew about nicotine addiction and manipulation (something that Grisham establishes in The Runaway Jury), it resulted in the “largest redistribution of the costs of corporate wrongdoing in American legal history,” it forced cigarette companies to stop advertising via billboard and merchandise, and it caused a drop in cigarette consumption, especially among youths (Torres Burtka). This “master settlement” mirrors Nicholas’s attempt at punishing Pynex by granting a $1 billion settlement to Celeste Wood in The Runaway Jury, as it financially punished the cigarette companies while also leading to a reduction in smoking, illustrating Grisham’s deep understanding of the cigarette industry and the legal system’s ability to make change.