In 2000, a jury ordered Big Tobacco to gave them $145-billion, but an appeals court struck down the verdict.
By Associated Press
Published July 17, 2003
MIAMI - Thousands of sick Florida smokers asked a state appeals court Wednesday to reinstate a record $145-billion award against Big Tobacco, arguing that a three-judge panel's decision ignored legal precedent and a two-year jury trial.
The court "flip-flopped" in spite of previous binding decisions, and more than 86 percent of the ruling "largely photocopied" the cigarette industry's court filings against the largest punitive damage award in U.S. history, smokers' attorneys said.
A six-member Miami jury set punitive damages for the smokers three years ago after deciding that cigarettes are deadly, addictive and defective because they make people sick when used as directed.
But the 3rd District Court of Appeal wiped out the jury award in May as well as the class action unifying 300,000 to 700,000 sick Florida smokers under a single lawsuit against the nation's five biggest cigarette makers: Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard and Liggett Group.
The appeals court decided the group was unmanageable, found that the award would have violated state law by bankrupting the companies, called the trial plan unconstitutional and chided smokers' attorney Stanley Rosenblatt for making racially charged appeals to four black jurors.
"The panel abdicated its role as a neutral searcher for truth," Rosenblatt and his wife Susan Rosenblatt wrote in their request for review. "Decertification is a disaster for Floridians and the Florida judiciary, but it constitutes judicial immunity for the tobacco industry."
William Ohlemeyer, vice president of Philip Morris USA, said smokers "have offered no compelling legal reasons why the court should grant them a rehearing." He said they "fall far short of getting over the high hurdle for obtaining reconsideration."
The Rosenblatts argued that the three-judge panel lacked the power to reverse its two earlier decisions in tobacco cases: a 1996 opinion shrinking the smokers' lawsuit from a national to a statewide class and a 1994 order approving a national class action for nonsmoking flight attendants.
The smokers asked the full court to review 36 legal questions "of exceptional importance" or pass them along to the state Supreme Court.
Six judges on the 11-member appeals court must agree to reconsider the case to resurrect it.
