A Suffolk County jury in Evans v. Lorillard awarded an additional $81M in punitives damages today, on top of their previous award of $71M in compensatory damages on Tuesday, for a total award of $152M.
The jury deliberated for only a short time this afternoon, after hearing from both the plaintiff and defense earlier today. The plaintiff was represented by Michael Weisman of Davis Malm & D'Agostine.
The jury's award is comparable to recent individual-plaintiff Engle-progeny tobacco verdicts in Florida, such as Townsend v. RJR ($90M), Webb v. RJR ($80M), and Naugle v. RJR ($300M, but subsequently reduced to $39M).
However, the bulk of the big Florida damage awards consisted of punitive damages, rather than compensatory damages. The $71M compensatory damage award in Evans is the largest compensatory damage award since CVN's tobacco coverage began, even though the $81M punitive damages award in Evans this month is comparable to the $72M punitive damages award in Webb last month.
CVN lets you watch the Phase 1 closing arguments in Evans v. Lorillard, as well as Phase 2 of the trial plus both Phase 1 and Phase 2 verdicts.
