[url]http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/19/us-tobacco-reynolds-idUKTRE76I6R820110719?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FUKHealthNews+%28News+%2F+UK+%2F+Health+News%29[/url]
[QUOTE](Reuters) - [B]The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a jury's order that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co pay nearly $30 million to a woman whose husband died of lung cancer after decades of smoking its cigarettes.
[/B]
The court issued a brief ruling saying it would not review the product liability award nor entertain any further motions for rehearing.
The tobacco company, a unit of Reynolds American Inc, argued the award was excessive.
The ruling could affect thousands of pending cases.
In 2009, a state court jury in Pensacola, Florida, ordered Reynolds to pay more than $3.3 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages to Mathilde Martin. Her husband, Benny Martin, died in 1995 of lung cancer that she blamed on his long-time smoking of Reynolds' "Lucky Strike" cigarettes.
The jury said Reynolds was 66 percent responsible for Benny Martin's death and that Martin, who started smoking in the 1940s before health warnings were added to cigarette packages, was 34 percent responsible.
The award was the by far the largest to date among the "Engle progeny" cases filed against tobacco companies by sick Florida smokers or their relatives. The cases stem from a landmark 1994 class-action lawsuit filed by a pediatrician, the late Dr. Howard Engle, that produced a $145 billion judgment against cigarette makers six years later.
The Florida Supreme Court overturned the Engle award in 2006 and ruled that Florida's ailing smokers could not sue as a class, or group.
But it made it easier for them to sue individually by upholding the trial jury's findings that smoking causes disease, that nicotine is addictive, that cigarettes are defective and dangerous, and that tobacco companies concealed the health effects of smoking.
Thousands of individual cases are still pending in Florida.
The case is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company vs Mathilde Martin, etc, No. SC11-483.
[/QUOTE]
It's TOBACCO ofcourse you will die! Why would she even... Blargh. Even so i hate tobacco companies for even CONTINUING to feed on the addiction of others so either this or the other...
[quote]The jury said Reynolds was 66 percent responsible for Benny Martin's death and that Martin, who started smoking in the 1940s before health warnings were added to cigarette packages, was 34 percent responsible.[/quote]
this is fucking hilarious for some reason
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;31218613]this is fucking hilarious for some reason[/QUOTE]
Made me picture someone walking into a wall and someone else saying [i]"You are 50% responsible for walking into this wall. The builder of this wall is 50% responsible, too."[/i]
[QUOTE=Quark:;31218782]Made me picture someone walking into a wall and someone else saying [i]"You are 50% responsible for walking into this wall. The builder of this wall is 50% responsible, too."[/i][/QUOTE]Not even that, since that's basically saying two people half share responsibility.
66% vs 34% sounds like they have three guys in the back crunching numbers for a tremendously elaborate responsibility formula.
So anyone that dies from smoking from now on is entitled 30 mil?
[QUOTE=Quark:;31218782]Made me picture someone walking into a wall and someone else saying [i]"You are 50% responsible for walking into this wall. The builder of this wall is 50% responsible, too."[/i][/QUOTE]
Not really. When he became addicted to cigarettes it wasn't as blatantly obvious that they're as dangerous as it is now.
Imagine if McDonalds said their burgers have 1 gram of fat in them when they actually had 19 grams. Is the consumer to blame for not knowing about those extra 18 grams and eating the burger anyway? No.
[QUOTE=crackberry;31219398]So anyone that dies from smoking from now on is entitled 30 mil?[/QUOTE]
How STUPID can you fucking be!?
Do you literally lack any ability to read it said this dear man started smoking BEFORE HEALTH WARNINGS WERE added.
[img]http://img2.timeinc.net/health/images/slides/moredoxsmokeluckies-notext-400x400.jpg[/img]
[editline]19th July 2011[/editline]
Physician approved!
[QUOTE=ThatHippyMan;31220241][img]http://img2.timeinc.net/health/images/slides/moredoxsmokeluckies-notext-400x400.jpg[/img]
[editline]19th July 2011[/editline]
Physician approved![/QUOTE]
[img]http://inlinethumb64.webshots.com/46975/2420429190104181437S600x600Q85.jpg[/img]
i suppose it kind of makes sense
he became addicted to them before it was known (or at least officially acknowledged) you could become addicted to them.
[QUOTE=Pirate Ninja;31219750]How STUPID can you fucking be!?
Do you literally lack any ability to read it said this dear man started smoking BEFORE HEALTH WARNINGS WERE added.[/QUOTE]
I tried to make a joke but it didn't work. How stupid can you be to not realize that?
i smoke
i'll quit soon though
Well if you grant that:
The tobacco companies KNOW that smoking causes death
The tobacco companies concealed that information until forced by law to admit it
The tobacco companies sell a product that they know will make their customers get sick and die, even though the customers only use the product exactly as it is designed to be used
The tobacco companies designed the product to be addictive
Yeah I can see their liability. Except for one small thing- why does anyone smoke in the first place, even if smoking was totally and completely safe WHY?!?
Smoke pot if you're gonna smoke something, at least you'll get a buzz off it.
You only get a small buzz for 10 minutes or so from smoking a cigarette. Why is that worth risking your lungs?
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