Jury awards punitive damages ($13.8M) to smoker's daughter

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

A jury on Monday recommended that cigarette maker Philip Morris USA should pay $13.8 million in punitive damages to the daughter of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer.

The panel voted 9-3 in favor of Bullock's daughter Jodie Bullock, who is now the plaintiff in the case. Betty Bullock died of lung cancer in February 2003.

She had sued Philip Morris in April 2001, accusing the company of fraud and product liability. A jury in 2002 recommended Philip Morris pay a record $28 billion in punitive damages to Bullock, but a judge later reduced the award to $28 million.

... In a statement, Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., which owns Philip Morris, said any amount given to Bullock's daughter is unwarranted.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/24/financial/f155041D82.DTL&tsp=1

[imdjh]

1. I have to disapprove and I quit smoking three weeks ago.

I don't know how they could figure that Betty wasn't a victim of her own choices and her biology. Had she drunk herself into a case of severe liver damage, it's hard to imagine anyone awarding her heirs millions of dollars.

[Bonobo]

2. Umm, why don't they spread that around to the other 10 million people f-ed up from smoking? nt

[pnwmom]

11. Because it wasn't a class action suit. Anyone who wants to set up a class action

suit is welcome to. But they're harder to prove and harder to win.

[WriteDown]

3. Lunacy...

This is the popular thing to do though.

[deep1]

4. That is some bullshit.........

what is so special about her case? Hundreds of thousands of people have died from cigarette smoking and she gets millions?

At what point do people become responsible for their actions?


Should I sue Mcdonald's for making my relatives fat?


Americans and their thirst for suing.

[strategery blunder]

5. I think in this case, she may not be responsible.

The article says that she is a DAUGHTER to a smoker. Betty is named as the smoker. Jolee is named as the daughter of said smoker, and is also the one receiving the damages. The article makes no mention of Jolee ever smoking. Granted Betty was the original plaintiff, but when she died from lung cancer, Jolee took over the lawsuit.

BETTY is responsible imo, but if Jolee is a nonsmoker (the article didn't say), she merely had the misfortune of being born to a smoker. Unfortunately, kids don't get to pick their parents. I find it difficult to hold Jolee culpable (unless she herself took up smoking, again the article doesn't say), and I am far more comfortable with the damages being awarded to secondhand smokers, who have little choice as to whether they are exposed to cigarette smoke, than I am with damages being awarded to those who willingly choose to smoke.

Still it is possible to argue that secondhand smokers are too far removed from the use of the product (the damages are too attenuated) for damages to apply. I personally feel that a reasonable jury could find it foreseeable that a product with known cancer risks to users could harm people in proximity to such users, but a reasonable jury could easily disagree with that as well.

I'm not a fan of tobacco companies myself--they put too many non-tobacco additives in cigarettes and I gag on the smell of secondhand smoke. I would much rather smokers switch to growing their own tobacco and/or using cigars, which are much easier on my respiratory system for some reason. :smoke:

[pnwmom]

9. Hundreds of thousands of people -- all who were addicted to cigarette smoking

at least in part because the manufacturers deliberately increased the amount of the addictive substance, nicotine, in their cigarettes -- could have sued. If they didn't, they didn't.

Why blame a family who successfully DID sue? If cigarettes -- used for their intended purpose -- are killing people, then their manufacturers deserve to be sued.

McDonald's serves food; cigarettes are not food. There's no comparison.

[PatSeg]

6. In 2002, a jury recommended $28 Billion???

And what were they smoking? This is insane.

[onehandle]

7. Good. Keep it up. Take the tobacco companies apart. Of course this is pennies to them.

Bring on the billion dollar judgements.

Tobacco companies are responsible for much of our healthcare problems in America.

Destroy them.

[WriteDown]

8. Same as McDonalds....

Sue them out of existence :eyes:

[pnwmom]

10. Cigarettes are not FOOD. Not the same at all.

It is up to the individual how much of their diet is composed of fats, carbohydrates, etc. McDonald's doesn't stop people from eating a well -balanced diet, especially over the course of a day.

On the other hand, there is no healthy way to incorporate cigarettes into one's day. They are an addictive, harmful substance that the body doesn't need to sustain itself -- unlike food.

[WriteDown]

13. Neither is Jack Daniels. nt

[imdjh]

14. True, but use and abuse are not the same thing either.

"On the other hand, there is no healthy way to incorporate cigarettes into one's day."

I don't know that this is true. While it's certainly true that smoking a cigarette is an unnecessary irritant, the standard of "health" in your statement would not be that which is best for a person, rather that which a person can indulge in (as humans do) for some pleasurable effect without major damage. By that standard, there are a lot of people who use cigarettes in a 'healthy' way- and every smoker has known such a person.

We came to abuse cigarettes in this country, the same way we tend towards excess in a lot of things. George Washington didn't walk around with a pipe in his mouth. My great grandfather smoked cigarettes like people do in Westerns- a couple of times a day and as a restful activity. My grandfather's generation (circa 1910) were the ones who took cigarette smoking to the prerolled and ashtrays everywhere level that my parents "enjoyed" before the smoking bans started to reverse the trend.

I'm something of a Carrie Nation when it comes to alcohol and drugs. Mostly I do it to annoy. But the simple fact is that no matter how man alcoholics there are out there (and I count more than the government does) there are indeed people who use alcohol lightly and infrequently and in a manner which doesn't make them a nuisance or burden to society.

[Frank Booth]

12. It's idiotic tort damages awards like this that give the tort reformers credibility.

I'd be willing to bet the original plaintiff kept smoking long after she realized it was bad for her health. But, lucky for her family, she apparently found a good lawyer.

[Jim Lane]

15. And if the verdict is overturned on appeal, the "reformers" will never mention that

Without knowing the specifics of the case, I'd bet on a reversal.