South Florida Personal Injury Blog

The first of the individual Broward personal injury tobacco lawsuits discussed last week has sustained a setback. The trial, which began with opening statements on Monday, was initially postponed due to a flood at the Broward courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. The trial resumed and witness testimony began, only to come to an abrupt halt yesterday when an expert witness for the plaintiff used an offensive racist term while discussing his research on race.

Elaine Hess is the widow of Stuart Hess, who was 55 at the time of his death from lung cancer. With her Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer, she is suing tobacco company Philip Morris for the wrongful death of her husband. Hess asserts that her husband was so addicted to cigarettes that he could not quit smoking, despite his best efforts when confronted with a life-threatening smoking-related illness.

Robert Procter, an expert witness for the plaintiff, inadvertently caused a mistrial yesterday, the second day of the trial, by using an inflammatory racist word. The expert witness was explaining his scholarly research into racism and the tobacco industry when he used the term. The plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer indicated that the research cannot be properly explained to the jury without employing that specific term because it is highly relevant to the issue of racism. Procter teaches the history of science at Stanford University.

The plaintiff’s attorney said, “[Procter] mentioned it within context of his research project, but the judge felt that the context the jury heard it within was prejudicial . . . that the jury was hearing about racism by the tobacco industry." He also indicated that the jury was racially diverse. Officials for Philip Morris, the tobacco company, believed that the mistrial was the correct action for the judge to take. They believed that the use of the racial slur was so inflammatory, regardless of the context, that the jury would be unable to remain impartial when evaluating the facts. The tobacco company conceded in its opening statement that cigarettes can be addictive, but it was up to the jury in this case to determine whether or not Mr. Hess was addicted to cigarettes.

Since the Florida Supreme Court ruled last year that the tobacco personal injury lawsuits in the state should be heard individually, rather than as a class action suit, thousands of plaintiffs across the state have filed their case against Big Tobacco. Of those, 122 have been filed in the circuit court in Broward County. To date, 165 personal injury tobacco cases have been filed in Palm Beach County.

The original tobacco personal injury lawsuit was filed in Miami-Dade County and resulted in an award of $150 billion, the largest verdict in U.S. history. The plaintiffs were approximately 700,000 Floridians who alleged injuries caused by the tobacco companies and their products.