Florida Jury Awards $8 Million To Widow Of Smoker
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Tobacco company, Philip Morris, was dealt a major blow Wednesday when a Fort Lauderdale jury awarded the widow of a smoker $8 million in damages.
It took two days for the six jurors to deliver the favorable verdict to Elaine Hess.
In 1997, her husband, Stuart Hess, died at the age of 55 of lung cancer after decades as a chain smoker. Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group, had argued that Hess could have quit smoking, but his widow convinced the jury he had tried but was hopelessly addicted and unable to quit.
And remember the video testimony to Congress of the “Seven Dwarfs” – the top seven tobacco company executives who in 1994 denied that cigarettes were addictive? The jury saw that videotape as well. Given these days of corporate wrongdoing and a public that’s just about had enough – that was effective and got right to the point.
The Hess case has been ongoing since early February. This phase established compensation. Mrs. Hess was awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, sending a message to the Richmond, Virginia-based Philip Morris, which not surprisingly announced it plans to appeal.
Farah and Farah filed many similar cases across Florida after the class-action Engle case was dismantled by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006. There are about 8,000 others waiting in the wings. An appeal will keep the case involved in the courts perhaps for years to come, which likely won’t deter the thousands of smokers or their loved ones who have waited for the day in court.
For years Big Tobacco enjoyed favorable rulings. This case, and hopefully others to follow, remind us what the Engle case established - that tobacco companies knew they were selling dangerous products and that they deceived the public by hiding those known risks. #