Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, epic lawsuits against tobacco companies sought compensation for the damage smoking had done to people’s health. Those legal battles are largely over.

Now, in a dubious quest to leave no stone unturned, Colorado’s largest city has opened a new front against “Big Tobacco.” It’s one that should leave even the industry’s most ardent critics scratching their heads.

As The Gazette reports, Denver City Hall is demanding some of the world’s largest tobacco companies pay — this time, not for the damage tobacco does to public health, but for the litter that some smokers leave behind.

Defendants include Philip Morris USA, Altria Group and Liggett Vector Brands, among others.

Denver officials readily concede they aren’t seeking to recover damages for smoking-related disease, addiction or health care costs. They want cash for repairing, maintaining and preserving infrastructure they say was damaged by cigarette filters.

The city even alleges the tobacco companies violate public nuisance, trespass, negligence and product liability laws — because of what their customers do with their trash. 

This is about litter. And even though Big Tobacco seems like easy prey — and an unsympathetic target — litter is no more the manufacturer’s doing than a stray straw wrapper or disposable lid on the sidewalk.

“It’s past time Big Tobacco cleaned up the big mess it’s created,” a posturing Mayor Mike Johnston said via email to The Gazette’s news staff. He called it “common decency” for the companies to “make basic changes to protect our environment and waterways.”

Isn’t it common decency to clean up after yourself? Apparently not.

Denver’s move follows Baltimore, which filed a similar lawsuit against Big Tobacco. (Of all the cities to emulate.)

“The claim becomes extraordinary once it is extended, as it would be, beyond cigarettes,” Philip Morris USA and others said in the Baltimore case. “If the city is right, every manufacturer and distributor of littered products — paper receipts, plastic bags, glass bottles, aluminum cans, and many others — would suddenly face civil and even criminal liability because consumers sometimes improperly discard them.”

“That is not simply (as the city admits) a novel theory of liability,” the defendants added. “It is an untenable one that would yield absurd results.”

Why not run a public awareness campaign urging people to clean up after themselves, instead? Or, since it’s already illegal to throw a cigarette butt on the street — how about enforcing the law? 

The city might make more money simply by hiking fines for littering than by launching long-shot litigation.

This lawsuit is the most extreme example yet of an ever-growing abdication of personal responsibility. It amounts to suing the makers of a legal if unhealthy product while ignoring the conduct of those who thoughtlessly toss it on the ground.

City officials admit cigarette waste is “definitely a part of” what park maintenance teams are cleaning up. Meaning there’s plenty more out there. Used drug needles come to mind.

But the tobacco industry has deep pockets.And when a city that can’t manage its budget goes scrounging under the couch cushions for spare change, this is what turns up.

Should Denver City Hall somehow succeed in court, rest assured, it will open the floodgates for every Colorado municipality with a budget hole and a legal department.