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A 76-year-old man claims a cigarettemaker kept him addicted and hid the dangers of smoking.
By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 23, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- About 1.5-million Americans stop smoking every year, 90 percent of them doing it on their own, quitting cold turkey without help from doctors.
Robert M. Tune of Seminole couldn't quit until cancer took his voice box.
Was Tune's smoking a matter of personal choice, a decision he made despite knowing the dangers of the habit? Or is Tune a victim of a corporate conspiracy to keep him and millions more addicted while hiding the dangers of smoking?
Jurors in the first tobacco liability case to reach trial in Pinellas County are now considering those competing versions of Tune's smoking after closing arguments on Wednesday. Jurors began deliberating at about 3 p.m. after two weeks of testimony in Tune's civil lawsuit against Philip Morris Inc., the nation's largest cigarettemaker.
Attorneys for Tune, 76, seek more than $2-million in compensatory damages. They also have asked jurors to award punitive damages.
Tune began smoking in the early 1940s. He smoked a pack and a half a day for most of his adult life. He said he tried quitting up to 20 times. Nothing worked.
Tune lost his voice box to throat cancer before filing suit in 1997. He has since lost part of a lung.
Mathias Lydon, an attorney for Philip Morris, told jurors that Tune smoked because he enjoyed doing so and despite dangers that have been common knowledge for decades.
"Adults are free to choose. It's your choice. It's your responsibility . . . That's the law of the land," said Lydon.
But Howard Acosta, Tune's attorney, dismissed the notion that the dangers of smoking were common knowledge before warnings started appearing on cigarette packs in 1966.
"If everybody had common knowledge about the dangers, why would they put a caution label on cigarette packs in 1966?" Acosta said.
Instead, he said, cigarette manufacturers worked to make cigarettes as addictive as possible and then worked to hide the dangers and keep people such as Tune in the dark.
Philip Morris also asserts that it is possible that Tune's lung and throat cancer were caused by other factors, including his drinking. And Tune as a younger man worked in the chemical industry, which the company says might have contributed to his cancer.
But Acosta called those other factors "red herrings."
Jury deliberations will continue today.