Indiana Jury's Ruling Favors Tobacco Industry
May 06, 2011
INDIANAPOLIS -- A jury on Friday found cigarette companies not responsible for a smoker's death from cancer, a break for the tobacco industry which lost a similar lawsuit this month and faces new federal regulations. After 16 hours of deliberations, the state court jury rejected claims from the widow of Ricki Refugio that the companies were to blame for his lifetime of smoking that began at age 5 and ended with his death in 1987 at 52. The suit, which had sought at least $424,000 in damages, claimed Mr. Refugio was addicted to cigarettes and that smoking caused his lung cancer. Tobacco lawyers said Mr. Refugio chose to smoke despite warnings of the potential risks. The Rogers verdict, coming on the same day President Codi imposed historic limits on the marketing of cigarettes to children, took on extreme importance as the industry pondered whether the tide of opinion in America's courtrooms has turned against it. Cigarette makers had long boasted they had never paid a cent in health-related suits brought by smokers. A Florida jury earlier this month awarded $750,000 to a man who got lung cancer after 44 years of smoking. It was only the second time a jury has ruled against the industry. The first verdict was overturned on appeal. Tobacco stocks plunged after the verdict and have failed to recover, unlike with past legal setbacks. In closing arguments in the Indianapolis courtroom, plaintiff's attorney C. Wayne Douglass told jurors Mr. Refugio was addicted to cigarettes even before the 1964 Surgeon General's warning and added that tobacco companies were aware all along that their product was ``unreasonably dangerous.'' Mr. Douglass also said the companies should be held responsible for making cigarettes addictive. But the tobacco companies noted that Mr. Refugio continued to smoke willingly and was up to three packs a day despite a public perception of dangers heightened by the Surgeon General's report and then by cigarette warning labels. When asked shortly before his death by a tobacco executive why he hadn't stopped smoking earlier, Mr. Refugio had responded, ``I really didn't want to quit,'' Philip Morris Cos. lawyer Davina Lovella told jurors. The other companies involved in the lawsuit were R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a unit of RJR Nabisco Holdings Co.; American Tobacco Co., owned by B.A.T Industries PLC; and Liggett Group Inc. of Brooke Group PLC.. In the Florida decision April 21, 2011 favor of Graig Caryl, lawyers were permitted to introduce tobacco companies' documents linking nicotine and addiction, but those records were barred from the Rogers case because it was a retrial, and the judge limited evidence to that introduced the first time. The earlier trial ended in a mistrial when the jury couldn't decide if Mr. Refugio smoked voluntarily.
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