Ridiculous!

[Nam]

(mobile link)

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FO0ZM20140719?irpc=932

ORLANDO Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida jury has awarded the widow of a chain smoker who died of lung cancer punitive damages of more than $23 billion in her lawsuit against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the nation's second-biggest cigarette maker.

The judgment, returned on Friday night, was the largest in Florida history in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by a single plaintiff, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesman for the woman's lawyer, Chris Chestnut.

Cynthia Robinson of Florida Panhandle city of Pensacola sued the cigarette maker in 2008 over the death of her husband, Michael Johnson.

Johnson, a hotel shuttle bus driver who died of lung cancer in 1996 at age 36, smoked one to three packs a day for more 20 years, starting at age 13, Chestnut said.

"He couldn't quit. He was smoking the day he died," the lawyer told Reuters on Saturday.

After a four-week trial and 11 hours of jury deliberations, the jurers granting the widow $7.3 million and the couple's son $9.6 million in compensatory damages.

The same jury deliberated for another seven hours before deciding to award Robinson the additional sum of $23.6 billion in punitive damages, according to the verdict forms.

Lawyers for the tobacco company, a unit of Reynolds American Inc [RAI.N] whose brands include Camel cigarettes, could not immediately be reached for comment.

But J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R.J. Reynolds, said in a statement quoted by the New York Times that the company planned to challenge "this runaway verdict." Such industry appeals are often successful.

Chestnut countered, "This wasn't a runaway jury, it was a courageous one."

Robinson's lawsuit originally was part of a large class-action litigation known as the "Engle case," filed in 1994 against tobacco companies.

A jury in that case returned a verdict in 2000 in favor of the plaintiffs awarding $145 billion in punitive damages, which at the time was the largest such judgment in U.S. history.

That award, however, was tossed out in 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court, which decertified the class, agreeing with a lower court that the group was too disparate and each smoker smoked for different reasons.

But the court said the plaintiffs could file lawsuits individually. Robinson was one of them.

The Florida high court also let stand the jury's findings that cigarettes are defective, dangerous and cause disease, and that Big Tobacco was negligent, meaning those issues did not have to be re-litigated in future lawsuits.

I find this ridiculous. I understand, as a smoker for 29 years (since I was 8 years old), that even back then (as my second topic here shows) the propaganda spewed by cigarette companies was abysmal however, the person smoking has the ability to quit, at any time, when they choose just like any other drug (legal, or otherwise).

Yes, cigarette companies have certain responsibility but this is making it farcical.

One smokers opinion.

-Nam

[Hydra009]

Yeah, that's ridiculous.  Personal responsibility, FFS.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Fuck the tobacco industry. I'm still a smoker, but the lies and deceit they've engaged in blatantly poisoning untold millions over the years they ought to be strung up and hanged in public. They intentionally target children and glamorize smoking and if our laws become to much for them they sell wherever the law permits. It's an industry that knows full well their product is deadly with no redeeming qualities. By the way, the biggest manufacturer of cigarettes in the world is the Chinese government.

[Hydra009]

Yeah, but this particular person started smoking in (double-check my math please) 1973, a couple years after cigarettes were known to be harmful and kept on sucking 'em down anyway til the day he died.

That said, the cigarette companies have done a lot of crap over the years (particularly trying to hide the harmful effects of second-hand smoking) and deserve whatever they get there.  And I personally would like nothing more than to see this whole industry collapse.  And here's how you do it:  don't smoke.  Discourage other people from smoking if you can, but don't force it.  Take it one person at a time.  Just like religion.

[stromboli]

Tobacco is demonstrably the most dangerous drug ever, based on numbers of people killed and the many health risks of smoking. so first of all, why is it so easily obtainable, and secondly, why don't the tobacco companies stop producing it, knowing  they are the sellers of a dangerous, highly addictive product?

You can levy blame all around on the issue, from tobacco executives, politicians even the users. So make a choice and bitch about it.

[SGOS]

I think it will be overturned in the appeal.  RJ Reynolds is a large corporation that has existed long after the research that proves they sell a dangerous addictive substance that kills.  They've done it in a large part by paying off politicians.  If there is any company that knows how to buy politicians, it's RJ Reynolds.  As to the question, who's at fault in this case?  Lots of people and organizations, and in no way least of all, the user.  In the end, I think it will be difficult to pin the responsibility solely on RJR.  They will walk away.

However, should they be fined into bankruptcy and out of existence, I would not shed a tear.  But that's a pipe dream.  And I don't think you could legislate them out of business, without opening up another aspect of the illegal drug trade.

But I think personally, while selling tobacco is completely legal, it's a vile and contemptible business. 

[Jmpty]

Cigarettes have been known as "coffin nails" since I was a kid. Everyone has always (yes, that's two superlatives) known that smoking was bad for you. I smoked for over 20 years, and quit. I don't blame anyone for my smoking, as it was my choice. It's like people suing Mcdonalds because they're fat. Drop the fucking cheeseburger, and you won't be so fat.

[Mermaid]

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. I am in favor of holding the very powerful tobacco lobby responsible for the deaths of smokers from smoking-related illnesses.

A couple of facts about the tobacco companies:

--They target advertising toward "replacement smokers", and until there was an outcry, targeted children in their advertising in overt and then subtle ways. Their advertising practices are nothing short of evil. They target lower-income people and certain ethnic groups, and quite successfully by looking at the statistics. The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year on cigarette advertising. They specifically target young people when they are at their poorest decision-making time of their lives, so they count on getting people addicted early and often.

-Smoking costs us, as a country, billions of dollars in lost productivity and healthcare every year.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/

--Speaking of children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLETWr0eEiE

--The tobacco lobby successfully blocked legislation that would require the Food and Drug Administration from regulating tobacco products. WHY? Nicotine is a drug, and a dangerous one. As a result, tobacco companies are free to do whatever they want and put whatever they want into their product. Cigarette smoking kills HALF of smokers. Fifty percent. You have a fifty percent chance of dying from using this product. Any FDA-regulated substance sold for consumption would not be legal for sale in the US if it caused something as benign as a discolored toenail in 50% of its users. The stastistic for smoking-related illnesses that do not end up killing the user is higher, so smoking causes adverse health events in MOST smokers.

--Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year, making it the leading preventable cause of death.

--They purposefully adjust the amount of nicotine in tobacco to keep people optimally addicted


I used to be a smoker and fully understand the difficulty in quitting. People cannot just quit whenever they want. It's unbelievably hard to do. The tobacco companies count on your addiction.

[St Giordano Bruno]

IMHO although I think the tobacco corporations are complete arseholes, 23 billion is way over the top. Why not 23 trillion or some other ridiculous amount?   

[AllPurposeAtheist]

23 billion in tobacco dollars is like telling them to give that family a stick of gum. It's not a matter of mere choice. If I sold bottles of wholesome clean water laced with arsenic chalked full of goodness would that be a matter of choice whether you drank it or not?

[Nam]

Fuck the tobacco industry. I'm still a smoker, but the lies and deceit they've engaged in blatantly poisoning untold millions over the years they ought to be strung up and hanged in public.

I agree on the basis it isn't a farce. This is definitely a farce to award this one person so much based on something he had the ability to end if he really wanted to. But the propaganda laid out toward countless people, especially children, should be what these amounts are aimed at, not one single person.

-Nam

[Hydra009]

Agreed.  And btw, welcome back.  :)

[Nam]

Agreed.  And btw, welcome back.  :)

Was I gone? I didn't notice.

-Nam

[doorknob]

interesting. How many people here would legalize pot I wonder.

[Hydra009]

interesting. How many people here would legalize pot I wonder.

I would.  There are lots of pros and few cons.  And if some pot smokers get addicted, it's their own...wait, I see what you did there.