Supreme Court throws out $80m smoking case

THE US Supreme Court threw out a $79.5 million (€60.5m) punitive damages award to a smoker’s widow yesterday, a boom to businesses seeking stricter limits on big-dollar jury verdicts.

The 5-4 ruling was a victory for Altria Group Inc’s Philip Morris USA, which contested an Oregon Supreme Court decision upholding the verdict.

In the majority opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court said the verdict could not stand because the jury in the case was not instructed that it could punish Philip Morris only for the harm done to the plaintiff, not to other smokers whose cases were not before it.

States must “provide assurances that juries are not asking the wrong question ... seeking, not simply to determine reprehensibility, but also to punish for harm caused to strangers,” Breyer said.

The decision did not address whether the size of the award was constitutionally excessive, as Philip Morris had asked.

Punitive damages are money intended to punish a defendant for its behaviour and to deter repetition.

Mayola Williams sued Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes, for fraud on behalf of her husband, a two-pack-a-day smoker of Marlboros for 45 years. Jesse Williams died of lung cancer over nine years ago.

She argued the jury award was appropriate because it punishes Philip Morris’ misconduct for a decades-long “massive market-directed fraud” that misled people into thinking cigarettes were not dangerous or addictive.

The cigarette maker, however, said a jury can punish the company only for the harm done to Williams, not to other smokers. The jury should have been told explicitly that other smokers, no matter how tragic their stories, would have to prove their own cases.