LEGAL TEAM: Husband-and-wife legal team Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt represented smokers in the first class-action lawsuit of its kind to go to trial.

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Ailing Florida smokers who are seeking damages from cigarette makers must file individual claims if they hope to make Big Tobacco pay.

That's the result of a Thursday state Supreme Court opinion that delivered a double-barreled blow to their decade-old, class-action case.

The Supreme Court unanimously pulverized a record $145 billion punitive damages award that a Miami-Dade jury ordered the tobacco industry to pay six years ago.

The high court also decertified the class action filed on behalf of approximately 700,000 smokers. The justices found that each ailing smoker must prove individually that cigarettes caused illnesses ranging from cancer to emphysema.

But on another important issue, four of the six justices let stand other key findings by the Circuit Court jury, including a finding that the tobacco manufacturers committed fraud by deceiving smokers about the addictive nature and harmful effects of cigarettes.

That could help the former class members pursue their individual claims. The justices gave them one year to file suits in Florida's courts. Those eligible would be Florida residents who can show they had smoking-related illnesses as of November 1996.

The six justices who heard the appeal -- a seventh dropped out because of a conflict of interest -- concluded that the jury's punitive damage award in 2000 was ''excessive as a matter of law,'' because it was unreasonably high and would have bankrupted the five tobacco defendants.

In doing so, the high court upheld a Miami-Dade appellate court's opinion.

The Supreme Court's 79-page ruling was a decisive victory for the tobacco industry. Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard and the Liggett Group had never faced a class action of this kind nor lost one of this magnitude.

''We're pleased this case is one step closer to finally being completed,'' said William S. Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris associate general counsel. ``At the end of 10 years of litigation, we are closer to where we think we should have been at the beginning.''

Wall Street read the decision as beneficial for the tobacco industry, boosting stock prices and clearing the way for a major deal involving the parent company of Philip Morris.

Experts say an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is highly unlikely because the dispute is essentially a state legal issue.

ATTORNEYS' REACTION

The two Miami attorneys who filed the smokers' suit in 1994 expressed mixed emotions about the ruling -- the final chapter in a David-vs.-Goliath legal tale that included two years of jury trial, hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents.

''To have that $145 billion punitive damage award wiped out is a huge disappointment,'' said Stanley Rosenblatt, who with his wife, Susan, took on Big Tobacco and its battalion of lawyers. ``But we're deeply appreciative of the Florida Supreme Court's findings.

''In the next phase, it will be easier to prove these individual cases because the Supreme Court allowed certain liability findings for trial,'' Rosenblatt said.

The lead plaintiff, Dr. Howard Engle, 86, of Miami Beach, said he was ''not disappointed'' because he expected it.

''They threw out the amount, but the case is still open so we'll pursue it,'' said Engle, a retired pediatrician who suffers from pulmonary illness and estimates he has ''a month or two'' to live.

In 2003, a three-judge panel of the Third District Court of Appeal tossed out the punitive award, decertified the class and said trial Judge Robert Kaye had wrongly allowed the six-person jury to consider punitive damages for the class before each member first proved individual compensatory claims.

Compensatory damages are for medical expenses and economic losses, such as wages. Punitive awards are meant to deter a defendant from future wrongdoing.

The plaintiffs appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, leading to Thursday's opinion.

A majority of the state Supreme Court -- Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis and Justices Harry Lee Anstead, Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince -- ruled that Kaye did not overstep his authority when he certified class and set up the trial schedule in two parts.

But the justices said the Florida smokers have ''highly individualized'' medical histories that ``do not lend themselves to class-action treatment.''

While the justices upheld some of the negligence findings against the industry from the original trial, they concluded that class members must still prove in individual trials that their illnesses were caused by the cigarette companies' products.

One legal expert who has followed the case saw the ruling as a ''huge victory'' for Big Tobacco.

''They don't have to write a check for $145 billion,'' said Clark Freshman, a law professor at the University of Miami. ''On the other hand, it's not a total loss for the Florida smokers. This ruling certainly gives them a little bit of a head start'' in a new trial.

COMPENSATORY SUITS

The individual cases would likely be similar to compensatory damage suits filed by three smokers as part of the complex class action.

In 2000, the Miami-Dade Circuit Court jury awarded $2.85 million in compensatory damages to former Gainesville-area nurse Mary Farnan, who had cancer in both lungs, and $4.023 million to Angie Della Vecchia, who started smoking as a child and died of lung cancer during the trial.

The jury also awarded $5.8 million to Orlando businessman Frank Amodeo, who suffers from throat cancer.

The Third District threw out those judgments.

The Supreme Court reinstated the awards for Farnan and Della Vecchia, but not for Amodeo, because his claim was barred by the statute of limitations.

''I'm very happy for Mary and Ralph,'' said Amodeo, 67, referring to Angie Della Vecchia's husband. ``But I'm disappointed in the decision; I'm only human.''

Amodeo, who has a feeding tube because he cannot eat or drink, said his wife of 46 years, Margaret, was ``hurt, depressed, mad and disappointed.''

Anti-smoking activist Rita Zemlock, president of the Florida Group Against Smoker's Pollution, was dejected, too.

''It's not fair,'' Zemlock said. `The industry is coming out smelling like roses, and these people suffered so much.

``We're all devastated after all these years we've been waiting. But maybe it's not over.''