Smoker's widow gets $8-million

[TropicalBob]

Long-awaited verdict in case of smoking window versus Philip Morris in Florida.

FOXNews.com - Florida Smoker's Widow Gets $8 Million in Damages - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

 

[Frankie]

If every dead smoker´s relatives sued and won, the producers would go bankrupt and who would then supply tobacco cigarettes to the masses. Interesting idea. For a movie script, even though these are strange times, so who knows?

 

[TropicalBob]

Could be a problem, Frankie. There are thousands of dead smokers' spouses in Florida who have been waiting for a verdict and award. If this suit was successful, other suits would follow. It was successful. And while the damages are not the outrageous amount some expected, they are high enough for an attorney to be interested in a 20% cut. Expect many more such damage suits to clog courts soon.

Imagine you're a tobacco company. If thousands of lawsuits are filed against you, do you try to settle out of court -- can any company afford that? -- or do you spend millions for lawyers to fight the suits. This suit was a precedent. Big tobacco lost. Big.

Awards like this might well be the beginning of the end for Big Tobacco. There is a bottom to their money pit, after all.

 

[GermanGoodness]

Could be a problem, Frankie. There are thousands of dead smokers' spouses in Florida who have been waiting for a verdict and award. If this suit was successful, other suits would follow. It was successful. And while the damages are not the outrageous amount some expected, they are high enough for an attorney to be interested in a 20% cut. Expect many more such damage suits to clog courts soon.

Imagine you're a tobacco company. If thousands of lawsuits are filed against you, do you try to settle out of court -- can any company afford that? -- or do you spend millions for lawyers to fight the suits. This suit was a precedent. Big Tobacco lost. Big.

Awards like this might well be the beginning of the end for Big Tobacco. There is a bottom to their money pit, after all.

Yes, but didn't the Supreme Court greatly diminish the previous class action award they were penalized with from something like a gazillion dollars to about 10% of that amount? Forgive me, my memory is horrible for details.

I'd like to know who's hands were in whose pockets for that decision.

 

[GermanGoodness]

Not to mention, many of us are in the age range of "not knowing cig smoking is bad for us." I will say however, I AM in the very tail end of that range! ; )

We could all file lawsuits.

Edit: WERE in the age range. At one point.

 

[Terraphon]

wow...

My mother died on 1-1-09. 45 year smoker.

I should sue. srsly.

 

[TropicalBob]

Yep, the story says an earlier gigantic class action lawsuit award was tossed out and individual cases had to be filed. But .. too late, Terraphon:

To be included in those findings, smokers or their families had to file individual lawsuits by Jan. 11, 2008.

Make no mistake about how big this decision is. It opens the (Florida, at least) floodgates with a precedent to collect millions -- for the heirs of each dead smoker. Naturally, it will be appealed, so a conclusion might take a year or two to be set in stone.

 

[dc2k08]

The 'winston man' is hoping he can live long enough to do the same

PM's defence was that the widow's husband could have quit any he liked but chose to continue smoking of his own free-will. But the key point in this trial was that the jury decided though that it was the addictive quality of nicotine which caused his death. If nicotine was not addictive then the case would have turned the other way. Nicotine and Big Tobacco have always had a love-hate relationship.

In the 1980's they employed a scientist to find a substance that was as addictive as nicotine but did not harm the heart like nicotine - “to create a cigarette that wouldn’t kill people”. This scientist said he invented that cigarette. But PM decided not to develop it because it would have to admit that it lied for decades when it said tobacco wasn’t addictive and it would cost too much money to remove the 160 tobacco products already on the market. He was fired instead and his response was to steal top secret files that eventually became a part of the evidence that forced tobacco companies to admit that their products were addictive and deadly.

The nicotine alone in the liquid we vape is harmful never mind what we don't know about the other ingredients. it could be e-cig suppliers who will be brought to trial in the future. - sellers, just err on the safe side and make sure you attatch a disclaimer however ugly it looks! Folks love $law-suits. Big Pharm can say the nicotine is present in their product as a part of a replacement therapy. e-cig suppliers cannot.

 

[stephenrowley]

I assume that when you say suppliers you are referring to the manufacturer and not the reseller you bought them from, as that would be like going after walmart for selling cigarettes.

 

[TropicalBob]

There is a similarity between the cigarette lawsuits and e-smoking. The verdict hinged on whether nicotine is so addictive that a smoker cannot use "free will" to quit. The ruling was that nicotine is indeed that addictive. Some smokers cannot quit. Period.

But it isn't nicotine that caused the smokers' deaths.

In relating this to today's e-smoking products ... it's the nicotine former smokers crave in our vapor. Toss out the "zero" nic smokers. They're too small to count. Most e-smokers do this for nicotine. They become addicted. The higher the nicotine level, the more hopeless the addiction will be.

But if one other substance in e-liquid turns out to be hazardous, then the entire scenario now gripping Big Tobacco will grip Big E-Cig.

My widow will be first in line.

Hey, I expect products sold without regulation to be absolutely safe. That's reasonable. If there were danger, the FDA would protect me, right?

See the problem?

 

[Frankie]

I still think this might result in very interesting things. If the relatives of dead smokers succeed to bankrupt the tobacco companies, the huge addiction market might collapse. I mean, imagine those bad big ciggy guys just closed shop because continuing would mean more loss than profit. Out of sudden there would not be supply, even if the demand still remains more or less intact. The government income goes down dramatically, but this is not the point. The point is what would people do if "the system" (lawyers, government, whatever) just took away from them something they perceive as life necessity. In a country full of citizen armed to their teeth, no less.

I think that in real life as opposed to a movie script there are forces which will stop this from happening in one way or another. If I am wrong, then I think we will see a nice remake of Scanner Darkly, this time in form of evening TV news...

 

[TropicalBob]

Imagine 40-million (in America only!) smokers denied their daily addiction! That would be 40-million addicts gone nuts at the same time.

That's one reason why the word "prohibition" or "ban" is never spoken in connection with cigarettes. That, and taxes.

I bet that there are some serious meetings going on today in the boardrooms of Philip Morris, RJR, P. Lorillard, etc.

Can't ban 'em? Bankrupt 'em.

 

[aaa]

Silly you. Those tobacco companies will not go bankrupt.

They will just further increase the price of cigarette at such colonies like Hungary, and the loss is compensated.
Our tobacco companies, courts and politicians are sold out to multinational companies like those, so they are safe here.

Not a surprise that our corrupted politicians were so eager to ban e-liquid containing nicotine the moment the question was raised.
Of course, it cannot be classified as tobacco product, nor as medicine or health product here, either, but laws do not bother our politicians much, when there is money on risk.

You just cannot imagine, how corrupt our politicians are. Probably Hungary is the only country where the financing government budget pays compensation to the company building a metro line here, if that building company does not keep its deadlines. (Of course it does not keep them). Yet, the budget paid billions before to a private consultant company to help them to conclude such a "good" contract.
We do not have high mountains, yet, the building cost of our motorways are among the highest here. If a sand hill is high enough to accommodate a tunnel, then they build a tunnel in the sand hill.
If it is some meters higher, they will build long bridges over the sand hills. They do anything to increase building costs. Once an engineer denied to build a tunnel in a specific sand hill, saying that it will not be stable enough in there. They fired him. The tunnel is still not ready, because it falled in two times since then...
Probably there are not so many countries where tens of representative buildings are privatized in a central district of the capital city at a certain price, and those are sold for 20 times as high price the next year by their new owners. Some cautious new owners even went back to the local government to ask them to increase the privatization price of the buildings, because they were afraid that their contract might be later annuled before court because of the extremely low price.
Now all left-wing and liberal politicians in the local government of that district are suspects before court, yet, those politicians decided not to resign from their positions held in the local government, saying there were no court decisions yet...

And no, the Hungarian media does not tear them into peaces, because they are also part of the same rotten elite.
In exchange, the liberal political elite puts independent media in financially and legally unbearable situation. It also tries to silence public opposition by a newly established typical liberal law, threatening with two years of prison if even a paper pellet is thrown at a politician at a public event. Even the "passive supporting presence" is threatened by two years at such occasions. (I do not know what those egg-throwing traitors insulting Mr. Ballmer here the last year would deserve according to the new law - maybe execution?)

 

[Sun Vaporer]

The apparent "victory" here goes to causation, but leaves damages up for grabs. As noted here:
"The damage award, the company said in a statement, "was the result of an unconstitutional and profoundly flawed trial procedure. Fundamental fairness requires the plaintiff to establish basic liability before a jury can award damages".. .Philip Morris will ask Circuit Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld _ Broward's self-styled "tobacco judge" with about 350 cases on his docket _ to throw out the $5 million punitive award and reduce the $3 million in compensatory damages. The company also will appeal the jury's key finding that Elaine Hess's husband, 40-year smoker Stuart Hess, was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes and incapable of quitting."
The jury did find that Stuart Hess was 58 percent responsible for the cigarette addiction that led to his death. If Philip Morris prevails on appeal, that could cut the compensatory damage award from $3 million to about $1.3 million.
Also interesting to note is the second of 8,000 similar Florida lawsuits filed against tobacco companies by Florida smokers and their families begins Thursday, a day after the first ended in the same court with the same judge presiding. Bear in mind that when Florida’s Class Action suit was struck by the Florida Supreme Court, the class consisted of 700,000. That is a significantly less amount than the 8000 on board now. How many of the 8000 cases will find there way though the court’s as opposed to being dropped, dismissed, or settled is still a long way off to be determined...but surly this is in fact a big blow to the Big Tobacco. Let the appeals begin----Sun See Widow of Fla. chain-smoker gets $8M in damages - wtop.com

 

[TropicalBob]

That class action suit was typically class-action ludicrous. Everyone in Florida who ever smoked and had health consequences (not necessarily death) jumped in. Why not? Free money. The real death suits are different. And Philip Morris is whistling Dixie trying to get a lower award. It might not. If it gets its hopes, that's a $1.3-million penalty.

You'll see a rapid succession of suits getting underway. This won't be cheap for Big Tobacco, whether they settle out of court or go to a jury. Juries are vicious today. None will side with Big Tobacco. Look at the size of that hideous award in the class action case that was thrown out.

I read today that in the county just south of mine -- one county -- there are 1,000 foreclosure cases EVERY DAY being heard by retired judges brought back to work to handle a massive backlog of lenders done wrong. People who can't pay are given 60 seconds to say something; a judge consistently gives them 60 days to vacate the property.