Richard Daynard
Biography
Fellow trial lawyers call Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) board member Richard Daynard "greedy," and "a bit more mercenary than people think he is." He has been described by The American Lawyer as "a zealot, by any standard." Known as the "intellectual godfather of tobacco litigation," he's now leading the charge to take away consumers' food choices. Daynard told the New York Times in April, 2004 that PHAI "will file suits against the food industry within the year.""We're not doing this to make trial lawyers rich," Daynard insists, talking about obesity lawsuits. But Daynard received more than $1 million for his tobacco attack. When that million wasn't enough, Daynard later sued two attorneys for a bigger share of tobacco litigation settlements, claiming he had a handshake agreement for five percent of a multi-billion-dollar windfall in legal fees. The Boston Globe reported in 2003 that he and his wife reinvested their tobacco ransom, using "some of the legal fees earned in that battle to fund the attack on obesity."
Daynard admits the holes in his own case against food. While he likes to draw parallels between obesity and tobacco -- and has even authored articles with titles such as "Food Litigation: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars" -- he acknowledged in TIME magazine that the differences are striking: "Someone who eats often at McDonald's also probably doesn't eat well at home and may lead a sedentary lifestyle." Daynard even told the Sacramento Bee: "Any food can be eaten in a way that's not going to cause obesity."
Daynard co-authored an article with PHAI chairman Anthony Robbins extolling "public health professionals who know that overweight and eating habits are not principally a matter of personal choice." But Daynard achieved his own physique the old fashioned way. When asked how he lost 25 pounds, he simply said: "I ate a lot less."
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