I see the Supreme Court upheld Big
Tobbaco! - Mephisto
Huh??? Check your dosage.....
Tobacco company loses Supreme Court appeal
From the LA Times
By Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writer
Published June 29 2001, 7:21 PM CDT
In a landmark event in the legal assault on tobacco, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday for the first time upheld a jury verdict in a damage suit brought by a smoker against a cigarette company.
The court, without comment, declined to review a Florida Supreme Court decision upholding a $750,000 judgment rendered against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. by a Jacksonville state court jury in 1996.
Friday's action was quite significant, according to industry analysts and anti-smoking advocates.
"Had the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take this case and then decided in favor of the industry it may have been extremely difficult for individual plaintiffs to continue to bring their claims against the industry -- almost anywhere in the U.S.," said Martin Feldman, a leading Wall Street tobacco analyst.
The case at issue was filed by Grady Carter, a retired air traffic controller, who smoked for 44 years and discovered that he had lung cancer in February 1991. He sued four years later, at a time when the industry had not paid a dime in damages in 40 years of litigation.
Mark Smith, a spokesman for Louisville, Ky.,-based B&W, said Friday that the company was disappointed in the outcome but added, "We remain confident in our ability to defend ourselves in future litigation." B&W is a subsidiary of British-based BAT Industries.
In papers it filed at the Supreme Court in April seeking review of the verdict -- whose damages have grown to $1.1 million with interest -- lawyers for B&W said 46 lawsuits by individual smokers are pending against the company in Florida and 1,490 similar claims are pending nationwide.
Cigarette companies are appealing three major verdicts against them in California, as well as a $144-billion verdict rendered by a Miami jury in a statewide class-action case last summer.
In a related development Friday, an asbestos trust fund said it had abandoned its lawsuit seeking to compel the major domestic cigarette companies to pay a share of health care costs for sick asbestos workers who smoked. A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., declared a mistrial in the case in January. At the time, Robert Falise, chairman of the Manville Trust, said he would continue to pursue the case, but on Friday his attorneys filed papers dismissing the action, which sought $130 million in damages.
Carter's case was the first in which a plaintiff introduced -- over vigorous defense objections -- highly damaging internal industry documents that had been stolen by former Brown & Williamson paralegal Merrill Williams.
Among them was a 1963 memo in which B&W's former general counsel Addison Yeaman declared, "We are then in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug," a statement made at a time when the company steadfastly maintained that their products were neither addictive or hazardous.
Carter had part of his left lung removed and his cancer is in remission.
The Jacksonville jury ruled specifically that the company was negligent in selling Carter "an unreasonably dangerous and defective product." The verdict sent shock waves through the industry, with tobacco stocks losing $14 billion in value in one afternoon.
In 1998, a Florida appeals court overturned the verdict, saying that Carter's lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations and because of a 1969 federal cigarette labeling law. The court also said the internal documents should not have been admitted.
But in November, the verdict was reinstated by a unanimous decision of the Florida Supreme Court, which reversed the appeals court on all three issues.
In January, the Florida court declined to rehear the case and in March B&W sent Carter and his wife Mildred a check for part of the verdict .
The sole issue that B&W raised in seeking U.S. Supreme Court review was its contention that the case was pre-empted by the 1969 federal law, an argument that proved unavailing.
On Friday, Carter said he was pleased that the long battle was over and that he expected B&W to pay the remainder of the judgment by the end of the year. Carter, 71, said that he was particularly satisfied that the cigarette companies had finally, grudgingly admitted that smoking is "addictive and causes health problems.
Carter said he decided to sue when he saw the executives of seven major cigarette companies testify at a House of Representatives hearing in 1994 that nicotine was not addictive. "I had to do it when they got up and raised their hands, knowing how hard I had tried to quit. That was the last straw," he said.
As I said, you must have to practice to be soooooooo stooooooooopid. |
