South Florida Personal Injury Blog

Fort Lauderdale accident lawyer Andrew Alitowski has been following the Florida tobacco case for years. In 2006, a Miami-Dade jury awarded the plaintiffs in a class-action suit a record $145 billion in punitive damages against cigarette-maker and tobacco company Philip Morris. After winding its way through the appellate process, the Florida Supreme Court determined that the civil suit should not have been tried as a class action. Instead, it gave each of the plaintiffs one year to file their lawsuits individually. Nonetheless, the Florida Supreme Court agreed with the trial court finding that the tobacco industry willfully misrepresented the addictiveness of tobacco products and their negative health effects. Fort Lauderdale injury attorney Alitowski has followed the progression of this case with interest.

The first individual tobacco case went to trial in Broward County and the six-person jury began considering its merits last week. As previously discussed on this Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer blog and in the local news media, the Hess family sued Philip Morris for the wrongful death of Stuart Hess, a 55-year-old husband and father who died of lung cancer. The Hess family contended that Stuart was unable to quit smoking cigarettes due to his addiction, which led to his death. Stuart smoked for 40 years, going through about two packs of cigarettes every day. The jury agreed with the Hess family – at least in part -- and returned a civil verdict yesterday, after deliberating for two days.

Elaine Hess, the widow of Stuart Hess, had asked for a verdict of $130 million, which the jury rejected. Because Florida is a comparative negligence jurisdiction, the jury was allowed to consider the behavior of Stuart Hess in its decision. The jury determined that Stuart’s actions were 58 percent negligent and that Philip Morris was thus responsible for only 42 percent of the total damages to his widow and son David. With that calculation, the jury awarded Elaine Hess $2 million for her losses and $1 million to David for his compensatory damages. They additionally awarded $5 million in punitive damages.

At this point in time, Fort Lauderdale plaintiff’s attorney Andrew Alitowski says there are in excess of 8,000 similar tobacco cases awaiting trial in Florida. The Hess case was the first of the former class action cases to see a jury. Following the verdict, Elaine Hess indicated that her decision to go to trial was not for financial gain. “Nothing can make up for the loss,” she said of her husband. Lawyers for Philip Hess contend that the verdict is not representative of the likely outcome of the thousands of cases still pending in Florida courts. About 4,000 cases are pending in the federal court system following the 2006 Florida Supreme Court ruling.

The following video shows a good example of the misleading advertising engaged in by Big Tobacco. Now famous, the Camel cigarette television ad brags that “more doctors smoke Camels”: