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Fort Lauderdale, FL— Philip Morris was hit with an $800,000 punitive verdict Tuesday for its role in the cancer an alcohol abuse counselor developed after years of smoking the company’s cigarettes. McCall v. Philip Morris, 2007-CV-036888.
Jurors in the state’s 17th Judicial Circuit, in Broward County, deliberated for a little more than four hours before finding punitives were warranted for the lung cancer Martin McCall developed after 40 years of smoking. McCall, who worked as an alcohol abuse counselor, died months after the 1992 diagnosis.
His family claims Philip Morris’ sale of dangerous, addictive cigarettes led to her husband’s cancer. During closing arguments Tuesday, their attorney, The Alvarez Law Firm’s Alex Alvarez, requested up to $4 million in punitives.
The verdict comes about three years after another jury found Philip Morris liable for McCall’s cancer, but cleared the company of liability for his death and awarded $350,000 in compensatory damages.
Tuesday’s verdict is the latest chapter in the case, which is among thousands stemming from Engle v. Liggett Group, a 1994 class action claim involving Florida smokers. A jury in that case found tobacco companies knowingly produced dangerous, addictive cigarettes and hid those dangers from the public. The Florida Supreme Court decertified the class on appeal, but its decision allows individual plaintiffs to rely on the jury’s conclusions in the original Engle trial if they can prove the smokers at the center of their cases suffered from nicotine addiction and a smoking-related disease.
While jurors found McCall was an Engle class member in the 2016 trial, they rejected plaintiffs’ claims for fraud and conspiracy, which, under the law of the district at the time, precluded any punitive award.
However, weeks after that verdict, the Florida Supreme Court held Engle progeny plaintiffs could seek punitive damages on negligence and strict liability theories alone, sending McCall, and other cases like it, back into courtrooms.
The five-day trial focused on whether Philip Morris’s history manufacturing and marketing cigarettes it knew were dangerous was mitigated by changes to the company, and the tobacco industry as a whole, over the last two-plus decades.
In Tuesday’s closings, Alvarez reminded jurors of evidence that the company targeted youth like Martin McCall, who began smoking at about 12. “Is there more egregious conduct than that?” Alvarez said during closings. “When they know that… 90 percent of… smokers start as teenagers, and 60% of [those that] go on to smoke will die of a smoking-related disease.”
But the defense argued punitives would serve no valid purpose in the case. During Tuesday’s closings, Shook Hardy’s William Geraghty highlighted the company’s work to design safer cigarettes, its voluntary restrictions on marketing, and strict oversight of the tobacco industry by the federal government. “Given everything that has happened over the last 25 years,” Geraghty said, “there is no need to punish or deter Philip Morris today.”
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
Related Information
Bernice McCall is represented The Alvarez Law Firm’s Alex Alvarez.
Philip Morris is represented by Shook Hardy’s William Geraghty.
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