Court throws out $145bn tobacco award

A FLORIDA appellate court yesterday threw out a record-setting $145 billion verdict for thousands of Florida smokers against the tobacco industry, saying the case should not have been tried as a class-action lawsuit.

The 67-page order by the 3rd District Court of Appeal decided smokers could not group themselves together in a single lawsuit against the nation’s five biggest cigarette makers. The award was the largest punitive damage verdict in US history. Tobacco shares jumped on the news. By eliminating class-action status for Floridians who claimed years of smoking made them ill, the court discarded the award issued in 2000 after a two-year trial.

The jury decided that cigarettes are deadly, addictive and defective because they make people sick when used as directed. It set punitive damages for an estimated 300,000 to 700,000 smokers after deciding compensatory damages for three people with cancer serving as representatives of the group. The

appeals court agreed with the tobacco industry the award would have violated state law by bankrupting them and called the trial plan unconstitutional.