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Third Time's the Charm for Defense in Fla. Smoker Suits
The American Lawyer
March 27, 2009
CORRECTION: The verdict against Liggett Group was incorrectly reported as $7 million in the first published version of this story; the correct figure is $700,000.
Last month we told you about the ominous news for the tobacco industry that came out of first of the post-Engle individual smoker suits to reach a verdict: A Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., jury awarded Stuart Hess' widow $8 million in damages against Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris. With some 8,000 similar suits lined up for trial, we wondered if the industry could survive the onslaught -- a question that seemed even riper in early March when the second Florida smoker suit resulted in a $700,000 verdict against Liggett Group.
But on Wednesday tobacco companies got some good news for a change. A state court jury in St. Petersburg, Fla., delivered a defense verdict for R.J. Reynolds and Altria in Gelep v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which was brought by the widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer. It was a convincing win: After a 2 1/2 week trial, the jury took only 90 minutes to clear the tobacco companies. Reynolds was represented by a Jones Day team headed by Stephanie Parker. Altria had William Geraghty of Shook, Hardy & Bacon (which also handled the Hess trial).
We called Parker to ask why the Gelep trial ended differently than the two that preceded it (aside, we said, from her brilliant work as lead counsel). "Each case was tried on individual facts," she told us. "We really put on a fact defense -- we had evidence like medical records in which [Gelep] told his doctor that he didn't want to stop smoking."
But Parker said the real issue for the tobacco companies -- which are facing a steady parade of trial dates in these post-Engle cases, with another three set to begin in April -- is whether the 11th Circuit will put a halt to the procedure the Florida Supreme Court established. (Under the state high court's ruling, individual plaintiffs don't have to prove that smoking is dangerous, that tobacco companies knew it or that the tobacco industry misled the public about the dangers.) "We believe these cases should not be tried the way they're being tried," Parker said. "It's incorrect under Florida state law, and there's a serious due process issue."
Parker is Reynolds' lead counsel in the federal appeal, along with Donald Ayer and Charles Morse of the Jones Day D.C. office.
We called plaintiffs lawyer Howard Acosta, who led the case along with Kent Whittemore, but didn't hear back.
This article first appeared on The Am Law Litigation Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.
