Reynolds Jury, Asked for $10 Billion, Awards $260,000
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. must pay $260,000 in damages to a Florida man who said he developed cancer and emphysema from smoking, a jury decided after a trial that started with his lawyer asking for $10 billion.
Six jurors in state court in Tampa, Florida, deliberated for less than two hours today before awarding $250,000 in punitive damages to Leroy Kirkland, 71, who said he became ill after decades of smoking Pall Mall and Salem cigarettes made by R.J. Reynolds, a unit of Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Reynolds American Inc.
The same jury yesterday decided the case in Kirkland’s favor and concluded he had suffered $100,000 in damages. Jurors found him 90 percent responsible for his illnesses, reducing the compensatory damage award to $10,000.
“It could have been and should have been more,” Kirkland’s lawyer, Willie Gary, said after the jury announced its punitive-damage verdict. “But this is my first tobacco trial.”
In his opening statement Jan. 27, Gary said he would prove Kirkland was due more than $10 billion in punitive damages, which is more than half the market capitalization of Reynolds American.
Gary, who won a $500 million verdict against a funeral-home chain in a contract dispute and $240 million over claims that Walt Disney Co. stole his clients’ theme-park idea, said he has 500 tobacco clients.
‘Personal Responsibility’
“The jury might have been troubled by the industry’s conduct, but they showed that they did believe in personal responsibility,” said Stephen Kaczynski, a lawyer for Reynolds.
Kaczynski said no decision had been made whether to appeal the decision.
The suit by Kirkland is one of more than 8,000 individual claims by smokers filed in state and federal courts throughout Florida after the state’s supreme court in 2006 threw out a $145 billion punitive-damage verdict against the industry and ended a class action filed on behalf of Florida smokers.
So far, smokers have won 22 of 33 verdicts in these “Engle” cases -- named after Howard Engle, the lead plaintiff in the unsuccessful class action, according to Edward L. Sweda Jr., senior attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project, which tracks the suits.
The case is In re Engle Progeny Cases Tobacco Litigation, 08-CA-673, Florida Circuit Court, Hillsborough County (Tampa).
To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Van Voris in New York at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net; Jerry Jackson in state court in Tampa, Florida, at myjacksonsreport@yahoo.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.
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