Avera & Smith's Rod Smith delivers closings at trial against R.J. Reynolds over the lung cancer death of a long-time Florida smoker. Watch the trial.
New Port Richey, FL— Jurors this week handed down a $1.225 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds for the role it found the tobacco company played in the cancer death of a Florida man. Walsh v. R.J. Reynolds, 2017-CA-000158.
The award includes $500,000 in compensatory damages awarded Wednesday and another $725,000 in punitives awarded a day later for Timiothy Walsh Sr’s death from lung cancer.
Walsh’s family contends he began smoking before he was a teenager, and continued smoking a pack or more of cigarettes a day, favoring Reynolds’ Camel brands, throughout much of his life. They contend his 1997 lung cancer death was caused by Reynolds’ cigarettes and a decades-long initiative to conceal the dangers of smoking.
The case is one of thousands spun from Engle v. Liggett Group Inc., a Florida state court class-action lawsuit originally filed in 1994. After a trial victory for the class members, the state’s supreme court ultimately decertified the class, but ruled that so-called Engle progeny cases may be tried individually.
Engle progeny plaintiffs are entitled to the benefit of the jury's findings in the original verdict, including the determination that tobacco companies had placed a dangerous, addictive product on the market and hid the dangers of smoking, if they prove the smoker at the heart of the case suffered from nicotine addiction that was the legal cause of a smoking-related disease.
What fueled Walsh’s smoking decisions throughout his life served as a key battle line in the case. In closings of the trial’s Engle class-membership phase Wednesday, Jones Day’s John Walker, representing Reynolds, reminded jurors of evidence that he said showed Walsh knew the risks of smoking for decades but did not do enough to try to quit cigarettes to avoid his fatal cancer.
And Walker pointed to expert testimony concluding that, if Walsh had quit smoking by the time he was 40, he likely could have avoided his cancer.
“The reality is that Mr. Walsh had many, many opportunities to avoid getting cancer by taking action that he didn’t take,” Walker said, “especially in the decade of the [19]70s when he didn’t even try to quit smoking.”
But in his closing Wednesday, Avera & Smith’s Rod Smith, representing Walsh’s family, contended Walsh was heavily addicted to cigarettes and believed false tobacco messaging that filtered and “light” cigarettes were safer alternatives to unfiltered options.
Smith said evidence showed filters and “light” options were created to prevent smokers like Walsh from quitting, and, in Walsh’s case, were successful.
“[R.J. Reynolds] knew all they had to do was convince [smokers] to smoke a new product,” Smith said, noting Walsh’s switch to filtered and "light" Camel brands. “He was the perfect customer for the company.”
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
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