La. jury awards $591 mln in smoking case

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The tobacco industry must pay $591 million to fund a 10-year program to help Louisiana smokers quit, a jury in a class-action suit decided on Friday.

The defendants include Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., part of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc.; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., a unit of British American Tobacco Plc; and Lorillard, which is part of Loews Corp. and trades as Carolina Group.

The defendants promised to appeal the verdict, which is less than the $1 billion the plaintiffs had requested.

The verdict is the second part of a case filed in the mid-1990s. A jury last year found the tobacco companies must fund the programs, and the second phase of the case was to decide how much that would cost.

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