Fla. Jury Slams RJ Reynolds With $23.6B in Damages

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

FLA. JURY SLAMS RJ REYNOLDS WITH $23.6B IN DAMAGES
By JENNIFER KAY
— Jul. 19, 2014 3:57 PM EDT
You are here
Home » Florida » Fla. jury slams RJ Reynolds with $23.6B in damages

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida jury has slammed a tobacco company with $23.6 billion in punitive damages in a lawsuit filed by the widow of a longtime smoker who 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 need only prove addiction and that smoking caused their illnesses or deaths.

The damages a Pensacola jury awarded Friday to Cynthia Robinson after a four-week trial come in addition to $16.8 million in compensatory damages.

Robinson individually sued R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 2008 on behalf of her late husband, Michael Johnson Sr. Her attorneys said the punitive damages are the largest 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 the woman's attorneys, Christopher Chestnut.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fla-jury-slams-rj-reynolds-236b-damages

[gerogie2]

1. OK. So tobacco companies will go out of business

People will still smoke cigarettes. They will just have to roll their own.

[Lenomsky]

4. How do you figure that?

I assume you mean that tobacco growers will continue to grow and sell direct to individuals or via smoke shops or something. In the UK folks have been rolling their own for eternity with Golden Virginia being the leader pretty much .. same tobacco (same additives) but come in pouches with papers.

Banning Tobacco products outright would be pointless akin to the war on drugs however if tobacco was harder to find I'd be less inclined to smoke as I'm habitually lazy. I've been through my recreational drugs phase having sampled more than the average person I'd hazard and that includes some very addictive flavours. I got bored with getting messy but I continue to smoke as the local stores all carry the product. I think tobacco should be banned and things like MDMA, LSD, MJ etc should be decriminalized immediately if not made completely legal but licensed and controlled to a degree.

Anyway I digress .. I hope the punitive damages severely damages Tobacco Companies for their lies and deceit over the years.

[Veilex]

5. Yes, they will have to find a smoke shop instead of being able to go to nearly any store in the US..

and get tobacco. That is exactly the point. No more big-brand cigarettes peddling their brand in attractive-to-kids packaging. Most kids don't know how to roll a cigarette... meaning fewer new customers. Just breaks your heart don't it.

[Blue_Adept]

8. It is getting a bit harder to find

At least in my neck of the woods of MA. You could easily go into just about any convenience store and get them. But after CVS dropped them, you notice there are fewer and fewer places carrying them. Heck, the big section behind the counter at CVS where you used to get them is filled with all sorts of quit smoking supplies. It really stood out this week and made me look at other stores where you see less cigarettes and more of other things, be it the supplies or lottery tickets.

[Veilex]

13. Indeed

I can't remember the last time I saw someone who'd had to get a tracheotomy as a result of smoking.
Its nice to know fewer and fewer people are subjecting themselves to those vile cancer sticks.

[gussmith]

23. I Read This Week

that smoking is up (more of it). Unbelievable.

[gerogie2]

9. There is this invention

called the Internet that a person can use to order anything they want.

[Veilex]

11. True...and this invention called a credit card....

which is needed for purchases on the aforementioned Internet... which, ironically enough, almost no kid has!

Imagine that.

[gerogie2]

17. There is this other invention..

it's called a pre-paid debit card. Also organized crime will step in to provide tobacco to any one that wants it.

[pscot]

27. A pack of Camels sels for $10 nowdays

That's $300 a month for a pack a day habit; a hell of a Jones for a teenager.

[Veilex]

28. Indeed

[Veilex]

29. Also true. A fun fact about Debit cards, prepaid or otherwise...

They require money to operate. Kids generally get money for their parents... most parents aren't going to shell out money for a pack of smokes... especially if they know organized crime is involved.

Will this stop everyone? Absolutely not.

But it is effective enough of a deterrent that it'll cut into profits from cancer sticks...
and that's good enough for me.

[spooky3]

22. Yeah, but they won't have multi-million $ budgets

To try to get millions of others to buy their cigarettes or to influence legislators or judges.

By the way, you are paying more in health care costs because of tobacco addiction and its consequences even if you are not a user yourself. If you don't care about people's health, maybe you care about your own money.

[bemildred]

2. KnR. nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. I sense some 99% payback in that verdict.

Big Biz is working hard to eliminate class action lawsuits.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. Recently, about 160,000 lung cancer deaths. And that is just in the U.S. alone, and only for 1 year.

[LittleGirl]

7. Quitting cigarettes was the hardest thing

I've ever had to do. Ever. Smoked for 33 + yrs. 4.5 yrs smoke free now.

[gussmith]

24. Good for You

Sorry that you had such an addiction..but you licked it!

[Politicalboi]

10. So when oh when are they

Going after alcohol? It's worse than smoking, and it's selling to children with "power" drinks with flashy cans and flavors. Alcohol still has commercials on TV. How is that possible? How do they get to sponsor sporting events? How does an ex alcoholic look at these commercials? When can people sue the shit out of them for the lives they've ruined?

[trumad]

14. Not sure---but does beer add hundreds of chemicals to keep me addicted?

[roguevalley]

15. its a libertarian pov that people should be allowed to kill themselves. That they do with the

absolute mendacity of companies doesn't seem to matter. If someone sold booze with antifreeze in it and told no one, I am sure they would jump also on any effort to end it and punish the liars.

[Psephos]

18. Translation: people are too stupid to run their own lives...

...and superior people have a moral obligation to run their lives for them.

Dance, little doggies, dance! And maybe we'll throw you a bikkie if you don't bark too loud.

okkkaaayyyy

[roguevalley]

19. :D

[Reter]

30. It's not worse

Casual and even moderate level drinkers are not endangering their health. Moderate level smokers are killing themselves from the inside out.

[randr]

12. Maybe they could grow their own

and leave out the hundreds of chemicals contained in todays nicotine delivery products.

[Shoonra]

16. $2.3 Billion sounds like a lot (like what the Pentagon spends every 14 minutes) but ...

... first, RJR will get it trimmed back by threatening to appeal until this widow's grandchildren are dead of old age.
Maybe it will finally get cut back to a few million, and then the law firm gets its cut, because it took on quite a job fighting the tobacco industry. So the old lady gets to live in Disneyland but not own Disneyland.

If you can remember back, the tobacco industry lied to everybody, used its financial clout as an advertiser to make sure most media would knuckle under (the fact that RJR and other tobacco companies spread out to absorb non-tobacco big advertisers, such as food companies, guaranteed they could bully even media that refused to advertise cigarettes), lied to Congress and to govt agencies, for many decades. Only gradually, and with the sort of discoveries that resembled international espionage, were we told that they deliberately built cigarettes that would fool mechanical nicotine measuring machines, that they deliberately adulterated tobacco with addictive ingredients like chocolate - without any knowledge of whether those ingredients were safe if inhaled as smoke, that they very bluntly destroyed and concealed enormous amounts of evidence that cigarettes were dangerous, that they worked hard at advertising to children long before their allowances could afford a pack of smokes, etc.

They had managed to beat court cases before these revelations, but now it's payback time and juries are piling it on to punish the tobacco companies for decades of crookedness. Unfortunately, many (probably most) of the worst offenders in the industry are now beyond reach. We can only hope that where they are now there's smoke everywhere.

[JackRiddler]

20. It's 10 times that.

Just saying. And it takes the Pentagon almost two weeks to spend 23 billion! (Staggering.)

[SheilaT]

21. I do have a real problem with all the people

who started smoking after the Surgeon General's Report which came out in 1964, and a huge problem with all those who started smoking after the warning labels were put on the packages.

So now you want me to have a lot of sympathy because you took up a product that was known to kill? You never ever saw any of the warnings? Really?

I do think that the tobacco companies are totally evil, and that they have lied and lied all these years, but none of that takes away the responsibility of the individual smoker.

[Jim Lane]

25. In hindsight, the tobacco companies have benefited from the Surgeon General's warning

Of course, they fought it tooth and nail at the time... but since then, in umpteen lawsuits, they've made exactly the argument you mention. They've pointed out that the plaintiff bought from them a product that was clearly labeled as having these dangers. I'm not sure of the details but I think that quite a few juries have agreed and have rendered defense verdicts.

[SheilaT]

31. That is true.

I have compassion of the many who took up smoking early on, especially if you go back and look at the print ads in the 1930's and 40's in magazines. I used to read Life Magazines from that era, and those ads are so awful as seen by modern eyes.

The thing is, by 1950 it was generally understood that smoking wasn't very good for you, and cigarettes were often referred to (although not by the tobacco companies) as coffin nails. But it was still portrayed as something glamorous and desirable.

Even today, when the dangers of smoking are well understood by anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for five decades, smoking is all too often presented as something glamorous and desirable in movies. I don't have much first hand knowledge, but it seems as if almost every actor in Hollywood smokes, and it shows. Even without getting something as terrible as lung cancer, smoking is so incredibly aging.

[Kaleva]

26. First thought this was about Reynolds Wrap.

[rdking647]

32. zero chance this is upheld on appeal

the supreme court has basically said punitive damages of that variety are illegal

they had said that a ration of 4:1 punitive to actual damage may be high enough to be unconstitutional and 10:1 almost certainly is

in addition florida law basically caps punitive damages to 4x actual damages or 2m unless the defendant had teh specific intent to harm the plaintiff



Florida law


(1)(a) Except as provided in paragraphs (b) and (c), an award of punitive damages may not exceed the greater of:

1. Three times the amount of compensatory damages awarded to each claimant entitled thereto, consistent with the remaining provisions of this section; or

2. The sum of $500,000.

(b) Where the fact finder determines that the wrongful conduct proven under this section was motivated solely by unreasonable financial gain and determines that the unreasonably dangerous nature of the conduct, together with the high likelihood of injury resulting from the conduct, was actually known by the managing agent, director, officer, or other person responsible for making policy decisions on behalf of the defendant, it may award an amount of punitive damages not to exceed the greater of:

1. Four times the amount of compensatory damages awarded to each claimant entitled thereto, consistent with the remaining provisions of this section; or

2. The sum of $2 million.

(c) Where the fact finder determines that at the time of injury the defendant had a specific intent to harm the claimant and determines that the defendant's conduct did in fact harm the claimant, there shall be no cap on punitive damages.