Smoker’s widow gets $8M in damages
FORT LAUDERDALE (AP) – Philip Morris was ordered by a jury Wednesday to pay $8 million in damages to the widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer in a case that could set a standard for some 8,000 similar Florida lawsuits.
The six jurors deliberated over two days before returning the award for Elaine Hess, 63, whose husband Stuart Hess died in 1997 at age 55 after decades as a chain smoker.
The award amounts to $3 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages against Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group Inc. Hess’s attorneys sought up to $130 million.
“It wasn’t about the money from the beginning,” Hess said after the verdict. “It was about doing the right thing. I just really hope this can help all the thousands of families who have also suffered.”
The Hess case was the first to go to trial since the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 voided a $145 billion class-action jury award in the so-called Engle case, by far the highest punitive damage award in U.S. history. The court said each smoker’s case had to be decided individually merits, but let stand that jury’s findings that tobacco companies knowingly sold dangerous products and hid risks from the public.
To be included in those findings, smokers or their families had to file individual lawsuits by Jan. 11, 2008.
Altria, the Philip Morris parent, issued a statement calling the Florida legal procedure “profoundly flawed” and predicted the damage awards would be reduced or thrown out on appeal.
“We plan to challenge the verdict in the trial court and, if necessary, on appeal,” said Murray Garnick, an Altria Client Services vice president and associate general counsel. “We do not believe today’s verdict is predictive of the outcome of future cases.”
The next case begins Thursday before Broward County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld, the local self-styled “tobacco judge” who has about 350 tobaccco trials on his docket. Others are pending throughout the state.
The Hess trial, which began Feb. 3, included video of the widely discredited 1994 testimony before Congress in which top executives of the major tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, denied that smoking was addictive. The jury in the Hess case previously found that Stuart Hess was hopelessly addicted, even as Philip Morris attorneys pointed to evidence he was capable of quitting.