According to reports, a Florida jury awarded a woman $300 million in her fraud lawsuit against cigarette maker Philip Morris.
They jury believes the woman was only 10 % at fault when she choose to start smoking 25-year-ago.
Philip Morris said it will appeal, and was quite critical of the trial judge in its statement. “Today’s verdict was the result of numerous erroneous rulings by the trial judge that allowed the jury to hear extensive evidence totally unrelated to the individual smoker, Lucinda Naugle,” Murray Garnick, the general counsel of Philip Morris’s parent company, said. “We believe that the punitive damages award is grossly excessive and a clear violation of constitutional and state law.”
Jurors took three hours to return the award to Cindy Naugle, 61, of Ft. Lauderdale, a former smoker who was given $56.6 million in compensatory damages and $244 million in punitive damages.
Naugle’s lawyer Robert W. Kelley said in a statement, “She told the jury that had she known then what the tobacco companies already knew, but had concealed — namely, that nicotine is a highly addictive drug, and cigarettes were considered by Philip Morris to be a drug-delivery device — she never would have taken that first puff.”
This is the largest award yet among 8,000 lawsuits filed in the state against tobacco companies.
What do you think of these types of cases?