Trial Opens In Fla. Widow's Tobacco Lawsuit
The first of about 8,000 lawsuits blaming the health problems and wrongful deaths of Florida smokers on tobacco companies went to trial this week.
According to an article that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the first of those plaintiffs to go to trial is Elaine Hess. The key to her case is proving whether her deceased husband, Stuart Hess, was addicted to cigarettes made by Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris.
In 2006, the Supreme Court rejected a $145 billion class-action suit, saying the punitive damages awarded by a jury were excessive. They did agree that tobacco companies knowingly sold dangerous products and concealed the health risks of smoking for years. They also ruled that smokers or their survivors must prove their wrongful death cases individually.
Elaine Hess’s husband, Stuart Hess, 55, died in 1997 of lung cancer. Hess’s attorney told a jury that Hess smoked about two packs of cigarettes a day and tried numerous times to quit. He also said that medical and other evidence shows that Hess became addicted to nicotine in the mid-1950s, long before the hazards of smoking were widely known outside the tobacco industry.
An attorney for Philip Morris did not dispute that cigarettes can cause lung cancer or that smoking is addictive, but did not think that Hess was not clinically addicted. According to the article, Hess was able to quit smoking at various times and that he knew the risks of smoking as a young man.
The outcome of the trial will not have direct legal impact on the other lawsuits, but the Hess case could signal how many of them will turn out.
In 2000, the Supreme Court voided a $145 billion damage award in Miami. This was the largest punitive award in U.S. history and involved a class of smokers estimated at about 700,000 as part of a 1994 lawsuit. It was the first class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies to make it to trial in the U.S.
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