An Alachua County [Florida] jury has awarded a total of $17.5 million in damages to Amanda Jean Hall, who sued the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. after the death of her husband.

It was, attorneys said, the largest single civil verdict in the county, topping the previous high award of $10 million.

Arthur Lamar Hall began smoking at 14 and continued until one year before his death of lung cancer in 1995, family members testified in the case. Despite several attempts, he had been unable to quit smoking.

Jurors were asked to determine whether Hall was addicted to cigarettes containing nicotine and if that was the cause of his death.

After seven hours of deliberation Thursday, they delivered a verdict that said Jean Hall and her family should be awarded $5 million in compensatory damages. When they returned to the courtroom at about 10:30 p.m., jurors also said they planned to award punitive damages against Reynolds Tobacco.

Friday morning they resumed deliberations to decide how much the company should pay for what the plaintiff's attorneys said was half a century of deceiving the American people about the health dangers of cigarette smoking.

Attorney Mark Avera asked jurors to consider the net worth of R.J. Reynolds in determining punitive damages. In fiscal year 2007, it was $8.88 billion; in fiscal year 2008 it was $7.9 billion.

"Send a message to RJR's boardroom that they will be held accountable for their poor choices," he said.

Speaking in behalf of the tobacco company, attorney Dennis Murphy said RJR's corporate management "has heard your message and we accept your verdict on compensation."

The "old guard" of the firm is now gone, he said, and message being put out by R.J. Reynolds has changed.

"Don't punish the company just for making profits," he asked.

Six jurors spent four hours determining how much the tobacco company should be assessed in punitive damages. The sum they settled on was $12.5 million.

When they returned to the courtroom and their verdict was announced, Jean Hall began to cry.

The widow of 15 years said she'd done a lot of crying since the first part of the verdict came in last night.

"I'd hand every bit back to them (the tobacco company), if I thought it would bring Lamar back for just one day," she said.

Attorney Rod Smith of the law firm Avera & Smith, representing the Hall family, said he fully expects R.J. Reynolds to appeal the verdict, as the tobacco company has done in other civil litigation.

Of a dozen cases tried since the Florida Supreme Court threw out a class action suit brought in behalf of all Florida smokers in 2006, ten of the verdicts have come in behalf of the plaintiffs.

In the 2006 ruling, the court held that each smoker's case against a tobacco company had to be decided individually.

...  Jean Hall said that the past two weeks of the trial represent the only time she has been inside a courtroom.

She had been getting ready for church one Sunday about three years ago and saw an ad on TV about bringing suit against a tobacco company. That's when she decided to step forward.

"She is one of the most courageous women I know," Smith said.

"I believe this verdict tells Big Tobacco that North Central Florida is not tobacco country," he added. "This case sets the precedent for the many individual cases to come."
Web Editor's Note:  RJR's attorney claimed "the message" from RJR management has changed -- Question, but they're still manufacturing and marketing addiction and death -- right?

A six-person Tampa, Florida state court jury on Wednesday [March 10, 2010] awarded $5 million in damages to the widower of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer at the age of 62.  The jury apportioned responsibility for Charlotte Douglas’ death at 18% for Philip Morris, 5% for R.J. Reynolds, 27% for Liggett, and 50% for Ms. Douglas.   If the verdict is upheld on appeal, the plaintiff will receive $2.5 million. 

Ms. Douglas, who died in 2006, approximately two years after being diagnosed with cancer, smoked various brands.  She also made multiple quit attempts, including the use of nicotine patches and nicotine gum.

Edward L. Sweda, Jr., Senior Attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project (TPLP), based at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, welcomed the victory for the Douglas family, noting that the “verdict brings the total number of plaintiff victories in ‘Engle progeny’ cases in Florida to 9 out of 11 trials that have gone to a jury verdict over the past 13 months.  We anticipate even more victories for plaintiffs in these Florida lawsuits in the coming weeks and months.”

 The Douglas family was represented by Attorneys Howard Acosta, Kent Whittemore, Bruce Denson and Hutch Pinder.

The Board of Directors of Altria Group, Inc. ... today announced the election of John T. Casteen III to the Board of Directors. With the addition of Mr. Casteen, the Altria Board increases from nine to ten directors.

Mr. Casteen has served as the President of the University of Virginia since 1990. He will step down from that position on August 1, 2010 and become President Emeritus at that time.

"I am delighted to welcome John Casteen to our Board of Directors," said Michael E. Szymanczyk, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Altria. "With his broad public and private sector experience, I know he will make significant contributions."

Mr. Casteen previously served as the Dean of Admission at the University of Virginia from 1975 to 1982, Virginia Secretary of Education from 1982 to 1985, and president of the University of Connecticut from 1985 to 1990.

Mr. Casteen's business career has included service as a director of the following companies: Connecticut Bank and Trust Company; New England Education Loan Marketing Corporation (Nellie Mae); Sallie Mae; Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Connecticut, Inc.; College Construction Loan Insurance Association (Connie Lee); Allied Concrete Company; Jefferson Bank Shares, Inc.; Jefferson National Bank; and Wachovia Corporation. He currently serves as director at Sage Publications, Inc.; Jefferson Science Associates, LLC; and the Virginia University Research Partnership, Inc.

Mr. Casteen has been a director of the American Council on Education, a director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, trustee and chair of the College Entrance Examination Board, commissioner of the Education Commission of the States, member of the Board of Control for the Southern Regional Education Board, commissioner of the New England Board of Higher Education, and chair of the Association of Governing Boards' council of presidents. From 1991 to 1993, he chaired the National Board on Oceans and Atmosphere. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Smoking has long been known to boost tuberculosis risk, and a new study from Hong Kong suggests that being exposed to someone else's tobacco smoke also increases the likelihood of contracting the disease.

Dr. Chi C. Leung of the Wanchai Chest Clinic in Wanchai and colleagues compared TB risk in older women living with at least one smoker to that of women living in smoke-free homes. The study included 15,486 non-smoking women 65 to 74 years old, all of whom lived with their husbands. All of the women had enrolled at one of the territory's 18 Elderly Health Centers between 2000 and 2003, and about one in four lived with a smoker.

During follow-up, which lasted through the end of 2008 (or until a person died or was diagnosed with TB), 117 women developed active TB and 69 of these cases were confirmed in a laboratory.

Leung's team found that women who had been exposed to secondhand smoke were 1.5 times more likely to develop active TB than women who didn't live with a smoker, while their risk of culture-confirmed TB was 1.7-fold higher.

Secondhand smoke exposure accounted for about 14 percent of active TB cases and about 18 percent of culture-confirmed TB cases.

The researchers also found that the women who lived with a smoker were significantly more likely to have some type of obstructive lung disease, such as emphysema, as well as diabetes, at the study's outset.

The findings appear in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine [February 8, 2010]

In a written commentary published with the study, Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California San Francisco notes that secondhand smoke has many known harmful effects, including increasing the risk of lung cancer and heart disease in adults and promoting asthma and lower respiratory illness in children. And smoking can promote respiratory infections, such as TB, by impairing the ability of the lungs to fight off infection, he adds.

In China, 60 percent of men smoke, but only 4 percent of women do, Benowitz notes, so secondhand smoke disproportionately affects women.

"Secondhand smoke exposure is another health problem of particular concern for women in less developed countries," he adds. "Therefore, smoking bans should be part of the international women's health advocacy agenda."

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said yesterday that it has agreed to pay $150,000 to Maryland as part of a settlement with that state's attorney general regarding a former Camel marketing campaign.

The settlement is the latest development involving claims that Reynolds violated the Master Settlement Agreement with a four-page pullout in the Nov. 15, 2007, issue of Rolling Stone.

On Jan. 15, an appellate court in Ohio ruled that Reynolds cannot be blamed for the content of a Camel advertisement in the magazine being placed around a five-page pullout containing cartoon images. The magazine ran four pages of Camel cigarette ads as bookends to five pages of editorial content about indie-rock music.

The day after the filing of the lawsuits in December 2007, Reynolds voluntarily stopped promotions for the campaign.

David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds, said that Reynolds admitted no wrongdoing. ... the company chose not to spend time or resources "to defend a program that ended two years ago."

There aren't many local musicians who've been able to earn a good, full-time living in Hampton Roads. Guys like Joe Maniscalco are the creative, industrious and fortunate minority.

However, more than 30 years in a workplace clouded with secondhand smoke that curled its way into his lungs has taken a toll. Smoking-related pneumonia and other illnesses have kept Maniscalco off the stage for nearly a year. Ironically, his health plummeted just as the smoking ban that took effect in December was well on its way to being passed.

This Sunday, Maniscalco's fellow musicians and entertainers will come together to raise the roof, raise awareness about the issue of secondhand smoke, and raise some money to help Joe and his family.

The past year has been "the most traumatic financial and emotional roller coaster you could imagine," Maniscalco said.

He was admitted to the hospital about a year ago with pneumonia and a fever of 104 degrees. He stayed in the hospital for a week. Once he was released, he was treated with steroids, but the cure was nearly worse than the disease. The steroids led to skin irritation and retinal tears that caused his eyes to haze over. All this meant more time away from the stage.

Fran Piggott Harding, Maniscalco's longtime business partner and friend, decided it was time to bring the musical community together to help him out. Using Facebook, she started a "Friends of Joe" page and went to work organizing a benefit concert. One of the first people she turned to was another full-time local musician, Warren Seaburg. He was able to relate to what Maniscalco is going through.

"Since about 1991, I've been a cancer survivor, and the cancer was brought on by the same thing," he said.

Seaburg has worked to bring health care benefits to working musicians and said he still has to take off four to five weeks a year because of lasting effects of the cancer. He will be one of the emcees at the benefit concert, and he helped schedule the hours of musical entertainment.

"For me, there wasn't even a second thought. I knew I wanted to help. The support of local musicians has been overwhelming, and it reminds me of when they had a benefit for me when I had cancer and couldn't work. It's hard to describe how emotional it is," he said.

Piggott Harding said the benefit concert is really all about the music that has been Joe's life. The all-day event features 17 entertainers, all donating their time. ...

"The brotherhood of musicians is mind-blowing," Maniscalco said. "Hampton Roads is coming together with an amazing outpouring of love."

And at the end of the evening, the most love of all will be coming directly from Maniscalco. The benefit will end with him taking to the stage to get back to doing what he does best.

Tobacco industry lawyers met secretly with Solicitor General Elena Kagan in an effort to avoid the government's last-ditch attempt to extract billions from companies that illegally concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking, The Associated Press has learned.

Four cigarette makers that control nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette sales have until Feb. 19 to persuade the government not to go to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to step into a landmark 10-year-old racketeering lawsuit.

In 2006, a judge ruled that the industry concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. Despite that finding, lower courts have said the government is not entitled to collect $280 billion in past profits or $14 billion for a national campaign to curb smoking.

As part of any effort to convince the government that it should skip a trip to the Supreme Court, the tobacco companies may have to drop plans to ask the justices to overturn the ruling that the industry engaged in racketeering.

On behalf of the industry, Washington lawyers Michael Carvin and Miguel Estrada made their pitch against seeking Supreme Court review in a mid-December meeting at the Justice Department with Kagan, according to two Washington attorneys outside the government who are familiar with the meeting in her office.

In the meeting, Carvin and Estrada left the impression the industry might be willing to end plans to seek a high court appeal of its own, if the Justice Department would do the same, said the Washington attorneys, who spoke on condition of anonymity so that they could discuss the private meeting with Kagan.

The discussion with Estrada and Carvin resulted in an internal department meeting a few days later. At this meeting, department lawyers discussed the possibility of seeking billions of dollars from the industry as part of a possible negotiated settlement of the suit, according to one of the private attorneys who learned about this second meeting from participants.

The department, the industry or both could request that the Supreme Court take the case, while at the same time asking that the case be delayed while the two sides try to work out a deal.

If the companies also agreed not to seek an appeal, they would be accepting the findings of U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler that they engaged in a scheme to defraud the public by falsely denying the adverse health effects of smoking, concealing evidence nicotine is addictive and lying about their manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes to create addiction. Last May, a federal appeals court upheld the findings. The companies then pledged to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Kessler ordered the companies to make corrective statements about the adverse health effects of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, the companies' manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery and the adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke. These statements must appear on company Web sites, cigarette packages and newspaper and television ads.

If Kessler's findings stand, they will set a precedent that other plaintiffs can use for future suits against the tobacco companies.

...  Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, declined comment, as did Carvin. Estrada didn't return telephone calls to his office.

Tobacco company defendants in the lawsuit are Philip Morris USA Inc. and its parent company, Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; British American Tobacco Investments Ltd.; and Lorillard Tobacco Co. Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard account for nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette sales. A former U.S. subsidiary of British American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., merged with Reynolds in 2004.

The way the federal suit has played out contrasts sharply with state action against the tobacco industry.

The companies have agreed to pay $246 billion over 25 years to settle suits states brought to recover their costs of treating smoking-related illnesses in the Medicaid program, which serves the poor and disabled.

  Updated 12 March 2010