California jury returns $20 million punitive verdict against big tobacco, brings total to $21.7 million.

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SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2000

Sending a message to Big Tobacco, a San Francisco jury on Monday awarded $20 million in punitive damages against two of the country's largest cigarette makers. The award was given to a longtime smoker who is dying from cancer.

The jury ordered Philip Morris Inc. and R.J. Reynolds each to pay $10 million to punish them for their malicious conduct in misleading smokers, according to the special verdict in the Superior Court case Whiteley v. Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc. #303184. The verdict follows a March 20 award of $1.7 million to compensate 40-year-old Leslie Whiteley and her husband Leonard for her medical expenses, loss of household services, pain and suffering, and his loss of consortium.

Leslie Whiteley and her family issued a short statement about the verdicts: "The Whiteley family wishes to thank the jury, judge and our legal team for their time, energy and careful decisions so that justice can be carried out and the truth be known."

Leslie Whiteley, who began smoking when she was 13 years old, is recovering from brain surgery. The lung cancer has spread to her brain and liver and her life expectancy is short, according to one of her doctors, Ventura oncologist Thomas Fogel, and according to to evidence introduced in trial.

The joint $21.7 million punitive and compensatory awards in Whiteley's case are the second set of plaintiffs' verdicts to be secured in California against a tobacco company. Both cases were prosecuted by Madelyn Chaber of San Francisco's Wartnick, Chaber, Harowitz & Tigerman. In the Whiteley case, Robert M. Brown was co-counsel.

Chaber said the verdicts are significant. " This is the first case involving someone who started smoking after the warnings were placed on packages of cigarettes," said Chaber. "The industry predicted a win in this case," she said.

"Their defense was to vilify the plaintiff as a risk-taker who had also taken illicit drugs," said Chaber, "and to blame her lung cancer solely on past marijuana smoking and not the 25 years of smoking one pack-a-day of the defendants' Marlboro and Camel cigarettes. They contended that Leslie Whiteley knew of the deadly nature of smoking, yet they themselves denied knowledge of it and the vast harm caused by their products."

Chaber said the jury, "after six and one-half days of careful consideration of the evidence, was able to see through the defendants' smoke screen to the truth: warning labels do not allow tobacco companies to tell half-truths and misrepresentations." "Leslie Whiteley's greatest mistake was believing them," said Chaber.

The San Francisco jury on March 20 found that Philip Morris Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. misrepresented the dangers of cigarette smoking to induce the public and Leslie Whiteley to smoke and continue to smoke, according to the jury's special verdict and Madelyn Chaber. The jury also found that the two cigarette makers negligently designed defective products and created from whole cloth a controversy that smoking had not been proven to cause cancer, emphysema or heart disease and insisting that nicotine is not addictive, according to the verdict and Chaber. Although the jury found in its special verdict that the asbestos defendant in the case, Metalclad Insulation Corp., designed defective products, the jury concluded in that Metalclad did not contribute to Leslie Whiteley's cancer when the plaintiffs' father and former husband worked with the insulation product and brought asbestos fibers home on their clothes.

Harry Wartnick, Chaber's law partner, said it is significant that a California jury recognized that tobacco companies bear the responsibility for their actions in inducing a 13-year-old to start using their terribly addictive products.

During the eight-week trial, Chaber presented evidence that the tobacco companies targeted youth to maintain a steady market of hooked smokers. Chaber charged that the tobacco companies knew since 1954 that smoking cigarettes caused cancer yet pursued a campaign of disinformation and misrepresentation. All the while, chemists for Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds worked to increase the potency of nicotine and to ensure its rapid delivery to the smokers' bodies, Chaber argued.

The verdict comes on the heels of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that the Food and Drug Administration does not have the authority to regulate cigarettes because since they were so dangerous granting jurisdiction would require a ban on cigarettes. The San Francisco verdict also follows a March 7 election where California voters overwhelmingly rejected pleas by Big Tobacco to overturn a tax on cigarettes. The tax is used in part to help deter youth from smoking. The plaintiff, Leslie Whitely, used her lunch money when she was 13 years-old to buy her first pack of Marlboros from a vending machine in Ventura, CA. By the time she graduated from high school, she smoked half-a-pack of cigarettes a day. Switching to Camel Lights and Camel Light 100s in the 1980s, Whiteley escalated to one and a-half packs. After a severe bout of bronchitis, Whiteley quit smoking in February 1998. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in June 1998. Whiteley lives in Ojai with her husband and four children, ages three through 11.

Whiteley's verdict is the second in California since the Legislature lifted a ban on product liability suits against the cigarette industry and allowed suits to be filed in January 1998. In another case tried by Madelyn Chaber, a San Francisco jury in February 1999 awarded a Southern California woman $51.5 million. The trial judge, San Francisco Superior Court Judge John Munter halved the punitive damage portion and reduced that verdict to $26.5 million. The defendant, Phillip Morris, has appealed its loss to the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

Judge Munter is also presiding over Leslie Whiteley's case.

Chaber was also successful in suing the Lorillard Tobacco Co. in 1996, securing a $2 million verdict for a psychiatrist whose fatal asbestos cancer (mesothelioma) was caused by his smoking KENT cigarettes with micronite asbestos filters. To date, the verdict in this case is the only one paid by a tobacco company.

In an Oregon case against Philip Morris, a jury in March 1999 awarded $80.03 million to the widow of Portland man. The Multnomah County Circuit Court halved the $79.5 million punitive damage award and left intact the $821,485 in compensatory damages. In the Whiteley trial, the defense attorneys are: for Philip Morris -- David Hardy, Lucy Mason and Gerald Barron of Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City and San Francisco [phone]; for R.J. Reynolds -- Jeffrey Furr of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice in Winston Salem, NC [phone] and Joseph Escher III of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco [phone]; for Metalclad Insulation Corp -- Greg Ross of Misciagna & Colombatto in San Francisco [phone].

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