FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  

Contact:
Edward Sweda or Mark Gottlieb

(617) 373-2026

e-mail to media @ tplp.org

 

September 23, 2009                                                                                                        

 Press Release

PLAINTIFFS FINDING SUCCESS IN POST-ENGLE FLORIDA TRIALS

 Tobacco Companies Under Heavy Pressure as Litigation Burden in Florida Grows

 

             As of September 2009, seven of the nine “Engle progeny” cases that have gone to trial in Florida have resulted in verdicts for the plaintiffs.  The breakdown of the results of these nine trials is as follows:

Hess v. Philip Morris    $3 million in compensatory damages; $5 million in punitive damages
Ferlanti v. Liggett  $700,000 in compensatory damages
Gelep v. RJR    Defense verdict
Kalyvas v. Philip Morris   Defense verdict
Sherman v. RJR   $1.5 million in compensatory damages; no punitive damages
Brown v. RJR  $1.2 million in compensatory damages; no punitive damages
Martin v. RJR  $5 million in compensatory damages; $25 million in punitive damages  (66% responsibility to RJR, 34% to Martin)
Barbanell v. Philip Morris $5.3 million in compensatory damages (36.5% responsibility to Philip Morris, 63.5% to Barbanell)
Campbell v. RJR $7.8 million in compensatory damages  (39% responsibility to RJR, 2% to Philip Morris,2% to Liggett, 57% to Campbell)

             Jonathan Gdanski, a lawyer who successfully represented widower Leon Barbanell in the Barbanell v. Philip Morris case in Broward County, told Reuters that “I think we’ve seen that these cases are winnable.”

             The largest of the plaintiff verdicts came in June in Pensacola County in the Martin v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. case.  Reaction was predictably dismissive from R.J. Reynolds spokesperson David Howard, who referred to the $30 million in damages as being “not in line with the other jury decisions, so we view it as an isolated decision.”  Edward L. Sweda, Jr., Senior Attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project, told the Winston-Salem Journal that the “unmistakable message from this jury is that the tobacco industry’s reprehensible misconduct must not be minimized or excused.”

             There are thousands of individual lawsuits that were filed following the landmark 2006 decision by the Florida Supreme Court.  See TPLP’s reaction to that decision here.

             Attorney Sweda commented that TPLP “looks forward to seeing many more Florida juries holding the tobacco companies accountable for their long history of corporate wrongdoing.”

 

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            The Tobacco Products Liability Project (TPLP) is a project of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, which is based at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.