Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein's Randy Rosenblum delivers closings at trial against Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds over the lung cancer death of a Massachusetts woman who had smoked for decades. Watch the trial.
A Massachusetts jury handed down a $510,000 verdict for the role it found Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds played in the lung cancer death of a long-time smoker. Petruzziello v. Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, 2181-CV-00378.
The award, issued late last month by a Middlesex (Massachusetts) Superior Court jury, followed a finding against the two tobacco companies on conspiracy claims associated with the 2019 lung cancer death of Maria Petruzziello. However, jurors cleared the companies on a range of other claims, including defective design, and they limited their award to Petruzziello’s medical expenses associated with her cancer. Jurors also completely cleared retailer Market Basket, which had sold cigarettes to Petruzziello.
Petruzziello smoked across more than four decades. Her family contends that Philip Morris and Reynolds are responsible for her deadly cancer by selling addictive, dangerous cigarettes, and by working in concert to mislead the public about those dangers for decades.
The trial, which ran through November, turned in large part on the companies’ messaging to the public about cigarettes and Petruzziello’s own smoking-related decisions.
During his closing, Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein’s Randy Rosenblum, representing Petruzziello’s family, walked jurors through evidence that he said showed Philip Morris and Reynolds, along with other tobacco companies, agreed in 1953 to form a united front against growing medical evidence of smoking’s dangers. Rosenblum said that agreement led to the launch of a range of initiatives and messaging intended to mislead the public throughout much of the latter half of the 20th century. And he added that those initiatives served to fuel the addiction of Petruzziello and others.
“What could have happened, instead of taking the one fork in the road to deny, deceive, mislead and hide, if [instead] they had told the truth?” Rosenblum asked, while showing jurors a graph of cigarette consumption increasing sharply in the years after that 1953 tobacco industry meeting.
“All that consumption could have gone down, instead of going up, and up, and up, and up.”
But the defense argues Petruzziello smoked for years despite knowing the dangers, and did not do enough to try to quit cigarettes for good. During his closing argument, Fasi & DiBello’s Joseph Fasi, representing Philip Morris, pushed back on plaintiff’s claims regarding Petruzziello’s smoking history, by reminding jurors of medical records indicating that she had quit smoking for more than 8 years at one point beginning in roughly 2007.
“If Mrs. Petruzziello quit in 2007, then she could have quit in 2004; and she could have quit in 1996, when her husband quit smoking; and she could have quit back in 1985, when the lung cancer warning went on the cigarette packs.”
R.J. Reynolds’ Kevin Boyce agreed, noting evidence that Petruzziello continued smoking even after Reynolds and other tobacco companies acknowledged smoking’s dangers as part of settlement agreements in the late 1990s.
“She’s not waiting to hear from Reynolds. She’s not waiting to quit,” Boyce said. “She knows what she’s doing.”
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
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