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Jury awards ex-smoker $20 million in punitive damages BOB EGELKO, Associated Press Writer |
Monday, March 27, 2000
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(03-27) 14:40 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A jury ordered the nation's two largest tobacco companies Monday to pay $20 million in punitive damages to a dying ex-smoker who took up the habit after the surgeon general's warning began appearing on cigarette packs in the 1960s. The Superior Court jury decided 9-3 to order Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to pay $10 million each to Leslie Whiteley and her husband. The same jury awarded the couple $1.7 million in compensatory damages last week after finding that the companies deceived the public about the dangers of smoking. That verdict was the first time the industry lost to a smoker who took up the habit after 1969, when tobacco companies began putting on cigarette packs a government-required warning that smoking is dangerous. Around the country, juries have awarded damages to individual smokers only five other times, and three of those verdicts were overturned on appeal. Companies are appealing the other two verdicts -- one issued by another jury in the same San Francisco court last year -- and have yet to pay any damages. Whiteley, 40, of Ojai in Ventura County, said she started smoking in 1972 at age 13. She smoked Philip Morris' Marlboros and Reynolds' Camels until 1998, when she quit shortly before doctors diagnosed small-cell lung cancer. Doctors said she will probably die this year. She testified briefly during the trial but was unable to complete her testimony and now is at home recovering from brain surgery, her lawyers said. The Whiteleys had asked for $115 million in punitive damages, which they said would represent 1 percent of the companies' combined net worth. Their lawyer said cigarette makers remain unrepentant for the harm they cause. Philip Morris lawyer William Ohlemeyer contended that punitive damages are improper because ``the companies have made profound changes in the way they do business.'' He and other company lawyers have pointed to the $206 billion settlement reached in 1998 by cigarette makers and 46 states suing over health costs. Both companies said they would ask the trial judge to overturn the verdict because Whiteley disregarded clear warnings about health dangers. ``Mrs. Whiteley never smoked a pack of cigarettes that didn't have a health warning on it that was written by the surgeon general,'' Ohlemeyer said. ``We continue to believe smokers have long been aware of the significant, inherent risks of smoking, and that people who choose to smoke in the face of these known risks should not be financially rewarded,'' said Reynolds lawyer Daniel W. Donohue. Madelyn Chaber, a lawyer for the family, countered that the companies themselves denied knowledge of the dangers of smoking both before and after Whiteley became addicted. ``Warning labels do not allow tobacco companies to tell half-truths and misrepresentations,'' Chaber said. ``Leslie Whiteley's greatest mistake was believing them.'' The companies said they will appeal if the judge upholds the verdict. During the trial, they argued that Whiteley harmed herself by her admitted use of marijuana, by smoking during pregnancy and by disregarding the warning labels. But after reviewing internal industry documents, jurors found that the companies designed cigarettes negligently, then made false or misleading statements to the public and concealed information about the dangers of smoking. The companies said Monday they would challenge the juries' consideration of documents and statements that Whiteley never saw, including a 1954 public statement by the tobacco industry. ``There was no evidence that Mrs. Whiteley relied on any specific statement by Reynolds Tobacco or Philip Morris in her decision to smoke or continue smoking,'' said Donohue, Reynolds' senior vice president and deputy general counsel. In the other smoking verdicts around the country, two cases in Florida and one in New Jersey were overturned on appeal; an $80 million verdict in Portland, Ore., was reduced to $31 million by the judge; and a $51 million verdict against Philip Morris in San Francisco a year ago was cut in half by Superior Court Judge John Munter, who is also presiding over Whiteley's case.
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