Big Tobacco’s Legal Stunt in
Florida Just Smoke and Mirrors

 Attempt to Circumvent Florida
Supreme Court is Sign of Desperation

 

Weeks before Florida trial lawyers will meet at a conference in Miami to discuss ways to file tens of thousands of cases against Big Tobacco, a legal filing that seemingly ignores basic rules of civil procedure has been filed by the nicotine industry.

On January 12, cigarettes company defendants found generally liable to hundreds of thousands of Floridians who were made sick or died as a result of smoking, filed a motion with the District Court of Appeals in Miami that, essentially, asks for a “do-over” notwithstanding the final ruling on the case from the Florida Supreme Court just last month. 

 

Background:

After the longest civil trial in U.S. history, the class action on behalf of Florida residents who were made sick or died as a result of cigarette smoking resulted in general findings that:

a) The cigarette companies were negligent;

b) Their products are defective and unreasonably dangerous;

c) Cigarettes are addictive;

d) Cigarette companies conspired to conceal health and addiction information with the intention of consumer reliance on the misinformation;

e) Cigarette companies were liable for breach of express warranty; and

f) Smoking causes Aortic aneurysm; Bladder cancer; Cerebrovascular disease; Cervical cancer; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Coronary heart disease; Esophageal cancer; Kidney cancer; Laryngeal cancer; Lung cancer (specifically, adenocarinoma, large cell carcinoma, small cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma); Complications of pregnancy; Oral cavity/tongue cancer; Pancreatic cancer; Peripheral vascular disease; Pharyngeal cancer; and  Stomach cancer.

 

The trial also resulted in compensatory awards for three representative class members and an enormous punitive damages award. 

 

The District Court of Appeals in Miami overturned the class in 2003 and threw out the verdicts.  In 2004, the Florida Supreme Court took up the appeal and, last July, ruled that while the punitive damage award was not valid, the general liability findings against the cigarette makers were correct and apply to each and every individual who was a member of the class.  Those class members and their heirs, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, have until January 10, 2008 to file individual lawsuits to benefit from the Florida Supreme Court’s historic ruling.  For the most part, all these plaintiffs will need to prove is that they smoked and that they developed one of the diseases approved by the court.  Then they can seek punitive damages as well.

 

On February 8 and 9, the Tobacco Products Liability Project (TPLP), a non-profit dedicated to the strategic use of tobacco litigation as a public health and cancer control strategy, will hold a conference at the Wolfsonian-FIU museum for plaintiffs’ attorneys who want to file these tens of thousands of individual cases for compensatory and punitive damages.

 

Last week, the case was sent back from the Florida Supreme Court to the District Court of Appeals in Miami for the limited purpose of carrying out the instructions of the Supreme Court. The prospect of defending an unimaginable number of individual cases in Florida seems to have motivated the defendants to file a motion asking the District Court of Appeals to consider a laundry list of reasons Big Tobacco believes that the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court is unfair, despite the fact that the Supreme Court expressly rejected those same defendants’ motion to reconsider its opinion just last month. 

 

The cigarette companies seem to have forgotten how our legal system works.  One does not ask the District Court of Appeals to overrule the opinion of the state’s Supreme Court.  The filing of this motion is a desperate act that has no chance for success and can only be justified as a means to temporarily appease stock holders and to try to discourage Florida trial lawyers from starting to file these individual cases by casting some doubt the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling.  Florida trial lawyers should be insulted that these defendants would think them so gullible. 

 

For more information about the TPLP conference, click here.

To see the cigarette companies’ filing and the Florida Supreme Court’s mandate, click here.

To see the Florida Supreme Court’s December opinion, click here.