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The Florida jury has come down hard on one of the nation's
top cigarette makers, R.J. Reynold Tobacco Co., ordering it to pay $23.6
billion in punitive damages in a lawsuit filed by the widow of a longtime
smoker that died of lung cancer in 1996.
The case is one of
thousands filed in Florida after the state Supreme Court in 2006 tossed out a
$145 billion class action verdict. That ruling also said smokers and their
families only had to prove two things to overthrow the verdict: 1) addiction;
and 2) that smoking caused the illnesses or deaths in question.
On Friday, Cynthia
Robinson’s 4-week-long trial wrapped up, awarding Robinson $16.8 million in
compensatory damages. Robinson individually sued Reynolds in 2008 on behalf of
her late husband, Michael Johnson, Sr. According to Robinson’s attorneys, the
punitive damages are the largest ever of any individual case stemming from the
original class action lawsuit.
“The jury wanted to
send a statement that tobacco cannot continue to lie to the American people and
the American government about the addictiveness of and the deadly chemicals in
their cigarettes,” said one of her attorneys, Christopher Chestnut.
Lawyers
argued that RJ Reynolds was negligent in informing consumers of the
dangers of consuming tobacco, leading to Johnson contracting lung cancer from
smoking cigarettes. They said Johnson had become addicted to cigarettes and
failed multiple attempts to quit smoking.
While Robinson was
certainly happy with the ruling, R.J. Reynold Tobacco Co. was, understandably,
not. “This verdict goes far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness,
and is completely inconsistent with the evidence presented,” said company vice president and assistant general counsel J. Jeffrey
Raborn.
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