Jury orders Brown & Williamson to pay $22 mln

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A jury in Independence, Missouri on Wednesday ordered Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. to pay $22 million to the family of a 73-year-old woman who died of lung and heart disease after smoking Kools for 58 years.

Ken McClain, attorney for the woman’s family, said the panel made the award after finding Brown & Williamson, a unit of Reynolds American Inc., liable for 25 percent of the illness that led to Barbara Smith’s death in 2000.

"We demonstrated the company had lied for years and continued to lie in court,” McClain said.

A Brown & Williamson spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The jury award is the fifth largest in the United States for an individual smoker against a tobacco company, and includes $20 million in punitive damages, said Edward Sweda of the Tobacco Products Liability Project, which tracks tobacco litigation.

The larger punitive damages amounts were awarded by California and Oregon juries that were viewed as more liberal than their heartland counterparts, but the Missouri panel’s action proved that “the justifiable outrage...is really universal across the country,” Sweda said.

Tobacco companies have aggressively fought cases by individual smokers and have paid settlements in three cases that did not involve punitive damages, Sweda said.

The companies are appealing 10 cases dating back to 1999, in which juries awarded punitive damages amounts as large as $28 billion.

Most of the punitive damages awards were slashed by trial or appeals courts, leaving the largest standing verdict at $79.5 million, Sweda said.

The U.S. Supreme Court reined in punitive damages in recent years by suggesting a 4-to-1 ratio between punitive and economic damages.

The ruling, often cited by tobacco companies, sent the cases back to state appeals courts for a final calculation of punitive damages.

Oral arguments in an Oregon smoker’s case were set for May 10 before the state supreme court in what was expected to be the first punitive damages award to be resolved, Sweda said.

That case—Williams-Branch—involves $79.5-million in punitive damages against Philip Morris Cos., a unit of Altria Group.

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