Alex Alvarez delivers his closing argument at trial against Philip Morris over the lung cancer death of a long-time smoker. Jurors awarded $50 million and found Philip Morris 75 percent responsible. Watch the trial.
Miami, FL—Jurors earlier this month handed down a $50 million verdict for the cancer death of a Florida woman who smoked Philip Morris’ Virginia Slims cigarettes for years, and they found the company 75 percent responsible for her disease. Lipp v. Philip Morris, 2017-CA-018509.
Norma Lipp died from lung cancer in 1993, after decades of smoking, including roughly 16 years smoking Philip Morris’ Virginia Slims. Lipp’s family contends the company and its cigarettes are to blame for her cancer.
The jury, in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit, apportioned 25 percent of fault to Lipp herself, likely reducing the post-verdict award to $37.5 million.
The case has taken a complicated legal path to this month’s verdict. It’s one of thousands of “Engle progeny” cases: claims spun from 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 can be entitled to the benefit of that 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. However, to do so, they must prove the smoker at the heart of their case suffered from nicotine addiction that was the legal cause of a smoking-related disease, such as lung cancer.
The Lipp case’s first trial was scuttled by Covid-related court shutdowns in 2020. One year later, a jury in the case’s second trial found Lipp was a member of the Engle class and handed down a $43 million total verdict. However, the Florida Third District Court of Appeal reversed that award, after concluding that hearsay testimony was improperly admitted.
On this retrial, the issue of Engle class membership was deemed settled in favor of plaintiff, and punitive damages were not in play, leaving only compensatories and allocation of fault at issue. And the six-day trial centered largely on Lipp’s smoking decisions as opposed to Philip Morris’ sales and marketing of its cigarettes.
During his closing argument on behalf of Philip Morris, Robert Vaughan, of Kim Vaughan Lerner, highlighted evidence he said showed that Lipp knew the dangers of smoking. Vaughan said that, during the time she was smoking Virginia Slims, Lipp quit cigarettes while she was pregnant, only to return to smoking after each of her children was born.
“Now, ask yourself the question: is that the story of someone who is not aware of the dangers associated with smoking?” Vaughan said. “Or is that someone whose choices, whose decision-making, was entirely driven and based on the understanding that the cigarettes presented harm, and decided, made a choice, that she was not going to put her children at risk?”
However, in his closing, the Lipp family’s attorney, Alex Alvarez, told jurors evidence showed Lipp was addicted to cigarettes at the time she was smoking Virginia Slims and was caught up in tobacco initiatives designed to cast doubt on smoking’s dangers.
“When you have an addicted smoker, and they’re hearing competing messages… the addicted smoker, the addicted person, is always going to lean on the side that allows them to continue their addiction,” Alvarez said, while highlighting 20th century tobacco industry documents concerning efforts to cast doubt on smoking’s risks. “That was their plan. They preyed on their customers.”
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
Related information
Not a subscriber?
