Chris Burford
London
Judges rule against Big Tobacco Decision raises prospect of huge punitive damages award A state appeals court Wednesday reversed course and revived the threat of a crippling multibillion-dollar punitive damage award against the tobacco industry. Under the ruling, the jury in a landmark class-action case involving 500,000 Florida smokers can award punitive damages in a single lump sum instead of deciding cases one smoker at a time.
TOBACCO ATTORNEYS argued before the Third District Court of Appeal three-judge panel that damage decisions be made on a smoker-by-smoker basis. The companies, they argued, could more easily defend against individual lawsuits than one large suit carrying a potentially huge verdict.
In July, jurors found the nation’s five largest cigarette makers and industry groups had produced a defective and deadly product. The same jury is to determine damages in the second phase of the trial, to begin Nov. 1.
LANDMARK CASE The appeals court had ruled Sept. 3 that damage claims in the landmark smoking case must be considered smoker by smoker, rather than for the class estimated at half a million people. The decision raised the prospect of multimillion-dollar individual awards rather than a multibillion-dollar lump sum for the class.
The appeals court vacated its decision in September and called for oral arguments.
Dan Webb, lead attorney for the tobacco companies, insisted Wednesday that a single award would cause an “enormous amount of irreparable harm to the industry.”
Presiding Judge David L. Levy asked Webb why tobacco lawyers didn’t raise the punitive damage issue earlier, since the structure was set by another judge “almost two years ago.”
“They want to bury and cause to disappear one year of very hard work by a jury that focused on ... the misconduct of these defendants,” said Rosenblatt.
U.S. juries have awarded damages in smoking liability cases only five times — twice in Florida and once in New Jersey, Oregon and California. Both Florida verdicts and the New Jersey verdict were overturned on appeal.
The $206 billion national settlement reached with the tobacco industry in November bars states from suing to recoup the costs of treating sick smokers, but doesn’t stop lawsuits by individuals.
The Florida defendants are Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Lorillard Tobacco, the Liggett Group and the industry’s Council for Tobacco Research-U.S.A and Tobacco Institute Inc.