Law Firms Sanctioned $9.1M Over ‘Immense Waste of Judicial Resources’

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The tobacco settlement of 1998 has benefited states across the country, as each has received money—sometimes a substantial amount of money—to cover costs of smoking-related illnesses and initiate programs to keep young people from starting to smoke in the first place.

The Engle suit, which resulted in the tobacco settlement, is a class-action lawsuit named for Howard Engle, a Miami pediatrician who defeated tobacco companies in court. As a result of Engle, a multi-million dollar fund paid by tobacco companies was set up for Florida residents and their survivors who suffered from illnesses due to cigarette smoking.

However, a couple of law firms seem to have taken advantage of the tobacco settlement.

A panel of four federal judges has sanctioned two law firms for filing more than 1,000 baseless claims against tobacco companies.

Florida law firms Wilmer Firm and Farah & Farah are being penalized $9.1 million for filing 1,250 frivolous suits on behalf of “personal injury plaintiffs” on behalf of people who never authorized the suits, people who didn’t suffer from one of the required diseases, people who never lived in Florida, non-smokers, people who died, and people whose cases had already been tried.

The problems were discovered in 2012, after the court sent questionnaires to the plaintiffs named in the suits. A special master was then appointed to investigate.

The judges said the 588 actions filed for dead plaintiffs should have been filed as wrongful death or survival actions. The law firms “insisted they were in contact with their clients” and never suggested the plaintiffs were dead.

“[Wilmer and Farah] are held to account for the immense waste of judicial resources and contempt shown for the judicial process occasioned by maintaining over a thousand non-viable claims,” the court order reads. “As a result of their actions, other litigants faced increased delays as the Court had to divert its attention to cleaning up the mess that was the Engle docket.”

The special master and the judges recommended that the firms be investigated by the Florida Bar in addition to paying the fine. The judges arrived at the $9.1 million amount based on the $7,000 estimated costs for each frivolous lawsuit and the more than $435,000 estimated cost for the special master

“Equally unprecedented is a lawyer filing 1,250 frivolous lawsuits, followed by years of maintaining those cases through obfuscation and recalcitrance,” the judges wrote.

The law firms defended their actions, saying that after 10 to 15 years of preparing thousands of tobacco cases, it stands to reason that some of the clients would be unreachable or deceased once the suits finally came to court.