Philip Morris Ordered To Pay $300 Million To Former Smoker

MIAMI - CHRISTINE ARMARIO (AP)-- A South Florida jury on Thursday ordered Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million to a former smoker, agreeing that the tobacco company's negligence was the cause of her emphysema.

The award for Cindy Naugle, 61, is the largest to date among thousands of lawsuits filed in the state against tobacco companies.

"Cindy admitted her fault to the jury," her attorney, Robert W. Kelley, said in a statement. "But Philip Morris refused to accept any responsibility for her emphysema, even though she was an addicted customer for 25 years."

The award amounts to $56 million in compensatory and $244 million in punitive damages against Richmond, Virginia-based Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group Inc. The company said it will seek further review of the verdict by the Broward County jury.

"From the beginning, this case was marked by a fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional trial plan that allowed the jury to rely on findings by a prior jury that have no connection to the plaintiff," said Murray Garnick, senior vice president for Altria client services and associate general counsel, said in a statement.

The case is one of 8,000 lawsuits filed against tobacco companies by Florida smokers and their families.

Attorneys for Naugle, the sister of a former Fort Lauderdale mayor, said it's the largest Florida tobacco verdict to date.

"The jury saw her condition," Todd Falzone, who also represented Naugle, said in a statement. "We think that they felt it. She needed to rest for five minutes to catch her breath after making the 7 step walk to the witness stand."

Naugle started smoking in 1968 when she was 20 because she thought they "made her look older." After several attempts to quit, she stopped smoking in 1993 with the aid of a nicotine patch.

She requires 24-hour oxygen and must travel in a wheelchair because walking leaves her exhausted, her attorneys said.

Falzone said Naugle spends every minute "as if she were drowning."

The smokers' lawsuits have been working their way through Florida courts since the state Supreme Court in 2006 voided a $145 billion class-action jury award against tobacco companies. The court said each smoker's case had to be decided individually, but let stand that jury's findings that tobacco companies knowingly sold dangerous products and hid risks from the public.

"Large verdicts encourage other large verdicts," said Richard A. Daynard, professor of law at Northeastern University and chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project. "I think Philip Morris has finally met its match in Florida. This gives jurors permission to fully compensate plaintiffs for all the harm they suffered and to express their moral outrage at the industry's behavior."

The original Florida lawsuit was filed in 1994 by a Miami Beach pediatrician, Dr. Howard Engle, who had smoked for decades and couldn't quit. The class of smokers was estimated at up to 700,000 when the giant $145 billion award was issued in 2000.

Comments

[WykydRed]

10:22 PM on 12/02/2009

" ILuvBubbles

Why is smoking tobacco even legal, it kills?"

Because the Constitution guarantees people can put whatever they want to into their bodies, regardless of if it's "bad for you". Regardless of what anyone else thinks about you doing it. In other words (and I say this to all the dolts who seem to think "their" opinion is the only one that matters), YOUR opinions are not to be made into law. End of story.

Read up on Prohibition, learn the lessons the previous dolts who believed "their" opinions were correct and it WAS legal to impose their will on everyone else. The next Amendment to defeat this new Prohibition will cover more than smoking, and make everything legal again, as our Founding Fathers meant them to be.

And before anyone starts yelling about "second-hand smoke" and it's effects on dolts, present you OWN evidence, not biased-bases bullshit from ASH Klanners or GASP Klanners or any other Klanners. Hint dipshits: they PAY to have false stories putting forth false "proofs" (their words, no scientific proof whatsoever) in newspapers. Duh. Show us the bodies!

[Changeizgood]

07:02 PM on 12/22/2009

Then they should have put a skull and crossbones on them and marked the pack of 4,000 chemicals including arsenic, "POISON" with all the other poisons, like carbon dioxide. To hear the right explain it, CO2 isn't a dangerous gas, or poison.

Those are the guys I hope one day don't fall their drunk ar$es asleep in a garage with the car on.

Oops they have to know that's not so good an idea, so they know the breathing the "Poisonous chemicals" they should have warned the public much much earlier. It took years for them to stop disputing the surgeon general and they threatened lawsuits when the lable was made to be put on by the government.

But those profits just overrode good common sense. They should have marketed pot, and NOT Tabacco.

[philosopherkingtomas]

04:54 PM on 11/23/2009

ridicuous do not do it!
any awards over $1 million should have to go to CHARITY!

[iworshipthedoggod]

11:17 AM on 11/23/2009

and im a smoker.

[iworshipthedoggod]

11:16 AM on 11/23/2009

did anybody force her to keep smoking?why doesnt big tobacco just start paying all the lifetime smokers and be done with it?i wanna see people suing alcohol makers,for the lifelong struggle with alcoholism,how about people that have lost love ones because of drunk drivers?this is wrong on so many levels,this woman deserves squat.

[Washington Kos]

10:53 AM on 11/22/2009

It is time for middle class bailout. NO more stupid rebate gimmicks. No more more neoconservative politics. We need more jobs even if these jobs create an economic net loss.

rec. reading: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

I'm tired of this over emphasis on efficiency; the last thing that gonna be on policy maker's mind is efficacy when 60+ million unemployment American says they aren;t gonna take it any more.

[KIVPossum]

04:38 AM on 11/22/2009

Lifelong smoker here....

Screw these folks that smoke all their life and then sue when their lifestyle choice comes back to bite them in the butt.

Every pack of cigarettes I have purchased has had a warning on it.....yes, 20 times a day when I pick up the pack I am reminded that smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer, and other ills.

If I choose to ignore common the warning, abandon common sense, and fail to take care of my body, it is no one's fault but my own.

[MarkInEugene]

06:53 PM on 11/21/2009

No matter what you think about this award, $300 million dollars doesn't just come out of thin air. That money, traced to its source, came from revenue generating labor period. All legal and ethical arguments don't change the fact that this huge sum of money, if it ultimately is awarded to a single individual, came from millions of people in this country busy generating wealth through their labor.

Sure this may impact a corporate entity but never any corporate officers. It may put the corporation out of business, but the wealthy owners remain unscathed as people lose jobs, attorneys get rich and Floridians force upward pressure on insurance premiums nation-wide. Oh and one elderly sick smoker becomes wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

It makes me wonder if any human society is capable of a consciousness that is fair and logical?

[dadw5boys]

03:07 AM on 11/23/2009

You apparently do not know how money makes money. When your profit from each unit is over 300% your making a killing then compound interest and return on investments.

In the end you walk away billions each year. Byt the way how many years have they been in business ? over 300 years ?

[Ivar]

06:49 PM on 11/21/2009

Completely stupid..... Why the judge allowed it is beyond me.

[ramsha]

04:43 PM on 11/21/2009

Now I wish I had taken up smoking in my youth.

[T Pol]

03:13 PM on 11/21/2009

Hmmm, let me think about this a moment. I think some of you missed that she is a FORMER smoker.

She started at 20. Was addicted for 25 years. That means she quit at 45. She is now 61. That means she quit 16 years ago.

I don't know how old the rest of you are, but in 1968, I would have been 11. Let me tell you what the school assemblies told you back then. "It's never too late to quit. Once you quit, it takes about 10 years for your lungs to recover back to their normal healthy pink state, almost as if you had never smoked at all."

Peter Jennings died of lung cancer at 66. He quit smoking 20 years before, also still in his 40s.

Gee, I guess all that stuff we were told back then in those government underwritten assemblies was, uh, wrong.

[Stop Wall Street]

10:40 AM on 11/21/2009

it's too bad the only things recovering in this economy are the big banks & rich people, and the stock market
hat tip to http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

what a joke

[aceholiday]

08:56 PM on 11/20/2009

roll your own and don't support big tobacco. it's a painfully easy concept

[berrycooda]

08:08 PM on 11/20/2009

This sets a terrible precedent for all the smokers out there who
continue to smoke and now have something to think about when they get sick.
A lot of people have gotten lung diseases from smoking and many who never smoked have COPD and cancers etc.

It is obscene to award one person this much money when it could have gone towards cancer research and lung disease.
I hope that when these people get so much money (after the greedy
lawyers get their share) will donate some to some worthy causes.

[The Professor]

07:04 PM on 11/20/2009

Another example that tort reform is sorely needed.

[phanauer]

06:38 PM on 11/20/2009

For those of you who think this verdict was unfair and that the plaintiff should have been held solely respsonsible for her own illness, I offer the following facts:
The plaintiff started smoking in 1968, only four years after the first Surgeon General's report linking smoking to lung cancer and BEFORE warning labels were put on cigarette packs. The plaintiff started smoking at age 20 and it is highly unlikely that she even knew about any health hazards associated with the product. It is even less likely that someone that age would be influenced by medical evidence.
Nicotine, the addictive ingredient in cigarettes, is more addictive then heroin and it takes only a few cigarettes for someone to become addicted. More than 90% of smokers have tried to quit, but most find it extremely difficult or impossible to do so.
During the entire period when the plaintiff smoked, advertising for cigarettes was so pervasive and smoking was considered so socially acceptable that any health warnings about cigarette use were essentially drowned out for the average person.
For decades, the tobacco industry has sold a highly addictive product that kills people when used as intended. The industry particularly preys on teenagers and even younger children, because it knows that very few people start smoking after reaching age 21.
I can only hope that this verdict is just the first of hundreds yet to come.