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BRADY DENNISR.J. Reynolds says the check for $195,602.87 is not an admission of guilt, but a step to allow its appeal to continue.
ST. PETERSBURG - The cashier's check arrived at a St. Petersburg law firm just before 5 p.m. Monday - the day it was due - in a nondescript envelope.
The amount: $195,602.87.
It marked the first time R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has paid damages in a case brought by an individual smoker for injuries caused by cigarettes.
As fate would have it, Floyd J. Kenyon Sr. of Sarasota didn't live to see his historic check arrive from the nation's second-largest cigarette maker. He died in September 2002.
A former school principal, Kenyon suffered from lung cancer and emphysema after a 50-year addiction to nicotine. He first won a judgment against the tobacco giant in December 2001.
He was 73 then, kept an oxygen tank by his side and a mask on his face and got around in a wheelchair.
He had started smoking Camel cigarettes as a teenager in 1942 and switched to Salem 30 years later. Both are products of R.J. Reynolds.
After two days of deliberations, a jury awarded Kenyon just $165,000, roughly the amount of his past medical expenses.
Since then, the case has been under appeal. Recently the state 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland issued a per curiam, or unsigned, opinion affirming the lower court's judgment and ordering Reynolds to pay up.
The company asked the court for reconsideration but was denied. So it sent the check this week, along with the accrued interest.
"They finally had to acknowledge with money that they were wrong," said Howard Acosta, a St. Petersburg attorney who represented Kenyon and represents other clients against tobacco companies. "We hope it is the first of many."
Officials from Reynolds see the case in a different light. They say the company plans to continue appeals of the judgment - either to the Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court - but that the payment had to be made before that can happen.
"It shouldn't be taken as paying a judgment," said Dan Donahue, an attorney for Reynolds in North Carolina. "We think of it in terms of having to make that payment to continue in the appellate process."
Donahue maintains that the jury in Kenyon's case was allowed to find liability simply as a result of Reynolds selling cigarettes, rather than having to find some defect in the product.
"We believe that conflicts with several Supreme Court cases," he said. "We are confident that we'll prevail (on appeal)."
The courts still must decide whether Reynolds is responsible for paying Kenyon's attorney fees.
Acosta estimates that he spent more than $500,000 on the case.
And while Reynolds attorneys have not disclosed their costs, Acosta estimated that the case cost the company $6-million to $10-million in legal fees.
"We had offered to settle for $45,000," he said. "They refused, and we won."
Acosta said the victory in court meant as much, if not more, than the check that arrived in the mail this week. The cause, he said, is more important than the cash.
"Just the fact that the jury recognized we were right and Reynolds was wrong is significant," he said. "The money is really secondary. And it was really secondary to Mr. Kenyon."
- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.