A jury has awarded a former three-pack-a-day smoker, $51.5 million February 10, 1999, in a lawsuit against cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris. Jurors found the world's largest tobacco company guilty of fraud and negligence and of failing to provide adequate health warnings to its customers.
Patricia Henley, 53, of Los Angeles, alleged the tobacco company hooked her on cigarettes when she was 15, and then misled her about the dangers of smoking. This is the first case to go to trial, and subsequently have a verdict rendered, since a California ban on lawsuits by individuals was lifted.
In a deposition taken before the trial, Henley testified she did not want any money from Philip Morris--saying if she won, any money left after payment of medical and legal bills would be donated to a group that fights smoking among teenagers. To avoid prejudicing jurors, Judge John Munter did not permit Henley to discuss this plan in trial testimony.
According to evidence in the case, Henley took up smoking in the early 1960s, and quit during the fall of 1997, when she began coughing and experiencing other symptoms. In February 1998, she was diagnosed with an inoperable cancer in her chest, which has responded well to chemotherapy and radiation treatments and is now in remission.
She accused Philip Morris of concealing the risks and addictiveness of smoking and of failing, even now, to warn people who start smoking they may be unable to quit. Phillip Morris insisted they were not liable because Henley understood and assumed the risks of smoking. The company also argued Henley's cancer did not start in the lung, as her suit maintains, and thus did not result from smoking.
In building their case, Henley?s lawyers benefited from hundreds of tobacco industry documents that have surfaced over the past two years. The jurors learned American cigarette companies have known for more than 25 years nicotine was addictive, and that smoking causes cancer and other diseases. Internal company memos entered as evidence show the industry developed a host of legal and public relations strategies to keep this information away from the public, the courts, and the government.
The verdict confirms the enormous legal challenges still facing America?s tobacco companies. Cigarette makers came to a $206 billion legal settlement with several states in November, but still face dozens of private class-action suits and hundreds of claims by individual smokers across the country.
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