I got pregnant on the pill, I want to sue the pharm company. My neighbor is fat, he is going to sue Wendy's. His sister's kid is ugly, she is suing God.

The guy died in 1997 at the age of 55. So he was born in 1942. From what I can find, the surgeon general started putting warnings on cigarette packs in 1966. While people knew smoking was bad for them, I could possibly see the widow being awarded something for the time of 1957-1966. But if the guy chose to smoke after there were warnings printed on the pack, then no. That was his choice after that point.

GS - I know a guy who is a preacher and a lawyer. Maybe he can handle the God lawsuit for you.

I agree with you to a point starangel, you are on the same track I was, but the problem is he was already addicted in 1966 when they started putting warnings on packs. I can't tell if the money is fair, I'm not a lawyer, but I think that the widow is right in this case and entitled to some damages.

I'll pass that on to my neighbor's sister.

But people quit every day Myd. The fact he didn't quit after the warning were put on is his problem.

Maybe so mydia, but $8 million? That's a little hefty. As far as the smoking/addiction... I started when I was 15. And I knew the dangers. Stopped cold turkey 3 months ago at age 26. Eleven years. I just put them down. I smoked once last month and almost got sick. That was all I needed to end the addiction. I know it is harder for some than others, but he knew the dangers after 1966. He could have stopped smoking.

The widow is entitled to nothing.

It doesn't matter if he was addicted, he could have sought treatment, there's how many ways to quit now? Patches, pills, hypnosis... etc etc.

He chose to smoke so he has to live with the consequences. All this lawsuit does is open the door for more bogus lawsuits like GS illustrated.

In the case the jury believed that the cause of death was the addiction to cigarettes. People can quit everyday, but quitting an addictive substance is very difficult and that's what they decided on. These kind of lawsuits will wane in years to come as warning labels will have been on cigarettes longer, and then those that still choose to smoke have no legal recourse to sue big tobacco.

He chose to smoke but there still are plenty of tobacco company claims that their products are not addictive, that they do nothing to enhance those non-addictive tendencies.
Buyers need to beware, and this guy wasn't so he died. But companies also need to be ethical in their practices: these companies weren't, so they have to cough up $8-million. I don't have a problem with it.

Food is addictive.
Who should we sue next?

Caffiene is addictive!!! Sell your Starbucks stock right now!!

I agree that the smoking lawsuits will drop in the next few years, but what about insane lawsuits like suing Oreo for making you fat? Or getting pregnant while on birth control? Or spilling coffee on you and suing cause it was hot? At some point, these lawsuits are going to have to stop or our judicial system will be tied up with could have been prevented by common sense lawsuits.

Sure the companies were shady. But the fact is that there is not one person alive who doesn't know that smoking can kill them.

So the companies can lie all day and it still doesn't change that everyone knows they are taking a risk by smoking. By taking that risk they give up all rights they have to sue the companies.

Well I guess the silver lining is that people who usually come into a large sum of money blow it pretty quickly and end up exactly where the started within a few years.

So that should stimulate the economy in Florida probably.

Quitting cold turkey is possible. Yes smoking is addictive, but I am not going to trust someone at a company, whose sole interest is selling cigarettes to make money, to be honest with me.... I think the stupid shall be punished. And he got the worst punishment of all. He liked to smoke. That's why he did it.
And if a settlement must be given, his wife should be entitled to no more than the amount he would have made if he were working. He only have 10 more years and then social security. Which she will be getting social security following his death anyhow. I really doubt if they awarded off of that, that she would have gotten more than 500,000.

Wow, that's pretty bizarre. It doesn't surprise me because this is America, but at the same time it does surprise me because you would think people would be smarter than that.

My grandfather and my mother died of heart attacks brough on by their use of salt. Should I sue Morten's?

Legally there is something called "assumed risk" and when you smoke there is an assumed risk with that. Therefore if you die as a result, you are entitled to nothing.

hainan, I read about a group back in the middle ages that made it law to kill those who spoke without knowledge of what they were talking about.
...wish they would do that today...

I hate the world.

How do you know this guy didn't get the cancer as a result of the smoking he did before the public knew cigarettes were bad for you (fyi - people didn't know that until the 1960s). The problem is that smoking was sold as safe, and definitely not harmful to your health, until 1966. This guy smoked before then, got addicted, and when he learned it was bad for you he couldn't quit.

I don't know if this award settlement is fair or not, but I think the judgment is fair.

As for food, coffee, etc. being addictive yes they are. Not as much as cigarettes but they are. But can you prove that Oreos made you fat and therefore caused your death? Only if you ate Oreos everyday of your life and nothing else. That's the difference with these smoking trials.

"So the companies can lie all day and it still doesn't change that everyone knows they are taking a risk by smoking. By taking that risk they give up all rights they have to sue the companies."

So the companies don't have to take any responsibility for their lies? We recently impeached a president for lying but everyone knows that politicians routinely lie, so why the big deal?

Since we all know that people lie all the time to get what they want, to get out of trouble, etc., are you saying we're to blame for any problems we have resulting from other people's lies and the liars are off the hook?

So Hainan, a sacred human life is only worth the amount a person might earn in their lifetime?

1) There is no way to prove that he got cancer from the cigarettes he smoked in the 60s so thats a moot point. If anything its more logical to saw it was more the recent years that sent him over the edge.

2)Even if you ate Oreos every day (which might be my version of Heaven ) there would be no way to prove it was the Oreos that did you in. Not to mention it wouldn't be the Oreos, it's the transfats, but since the nutrition info is posted, you are assuming the risk of eating only Oreos, just like you assume the risk of smoking.

I guess you could prove the Oreo thing if you ate them morning, noon, and night and that's all you ate. But that's another tangent.

How could you prove someone's lung cancer was from smoking? It could have been from another cause and smoking aggravated the problem. There are just so many what ifs.

Steph its different because of the warning on the packs. If there were no warning or studies or anything else and all we had to go on was the people of the company's word, then yes, I would agree the lawsuit has grounds.

But this guy chose to ignore all evidence, chose to ignore the words IN BIG BOLD LETTERS on the pack and went with some testimony by some tobacco guy that happened how many years ago?? Not likely.

The tobacco companies are treated like Devil incarnate in this country. No companies have ever had to do so much to make people NOT buy their products. It's not right unless we want to make the auto industry, the food industry, and the alcohol industry do the exact same things because all of those things can kill you and actually kill MORE of us every single year.

I'm sure that in this case they had expert medical witnesses that would have tried to prove (or disprove depending on if its a defense or plantiff witness) that this man's cancer was caused by cigarettes. The jury thought their was enough evidence to find the tobacco company responsible.

And this guy did get what he deserved from smoking, he died. He couldn't quit so he died.

I guess you could do the same thing for other substances if you wanted, though I don't know how sucessful people might be in these cases.

I dunno mydia, the precedent this sets is frightening. I'd be willing to bet that this will get a lot of litigious people a lot of money.

Now there are big bold letters that say cigarettes will kill you, but they weren't there when this guy started. That's the rub of the whole case!

Yea but I dont think that matters that there werent warnings when he started. If he would have quit when the warnings went on, he probably would have been fine.

Plus to be fair, the companies may not have known they were addictive or harmful before those studies came out. I'd be willing to bet they didn't.

Totally on a different tangent, but i think she should only be able to sue if she were facing some problem caused by the effects of second hand smoke. That is the only circumstance in which I think it is fit to sue for that large of a sum of money.

Aside from that, $8 million is far too hefty a sum for someone who chose to continue a habit even after they new the dangers, whether or not they could stop their addiction.

So if we put warnings on all politicians, then they can lie and we're to blame - even though we all know now that they lie?

Warning labels on cigarettes have been around for decades, but companies continue to lie under oath and no one's charged them with perjury. There are people, even here on Citizen, who will repeat the company lines that contradict the warning labels - should they smoke or not? If they do, should we laugh at them because they believed the company and not the warning label?

Its not ok for the companies to lie. But don't they back it up with some kind of information? If there is information to the contrary, then aren't they not really lying?

But lets say they are lying, they should be held accountable, but not by the end user who can't move 10 ft without seeing something saying smoking is bad for you. I would have to actively seek out information that says the opposite. You don't need to do anything to be bombarded with antismoking stuff. So the govt should hold the execs accountable for perjury but to suggest that the end user knew no different is just crazy.

And the govt DID hold them accountable didn't they? Didn't they pay out millions and continue to pay millions for anti-smoking ads?

FYI - there is zero, nada, no scientifically-produced and reviewed study that has proven that second hand smoke causes harm.

And as an aside - with all the lawsuits and taxes surrounding the tobacco industry, it is my belief that the tobacco companies have become the vogue way to get entitlement money. (Come to think of it, this poor widow probably will cause some poor middle-class SCHIPS child somewhere to not get proper healthcare coverage when the funding dries up. Oh well, she got hers, right?)

The companies are on the verge of going belly up. I doubt that there will any tobacco companies left to sue or products to tax soon (as a lot of people are now buying their cigarettes from cottage producers who fly under the radar.)

There was the Tobacco Master settlement in which there was a deal between the 4 largest companies and 46 states in which the companies have to pay out millions to subsidize the health costs of people suffering from tobacco related illness, in exhchange they got some protection from these kinds of lawsuits.

I'm guessing that Florida was one of the 4 states who werent a part of that.

Just talked to my bf about this, he is a litigation paralegal and here is what he said:

The fact that he started smoking before the warning labels is only one thing in the case. The plaintiffs case is going to rest not on the fact that cigarettes are dangerous, but that the companies knowingly hid the danger from their consumers.
say minute maid was selling orange juice that it knew caused brain disease. if they openly admitted the side effects from the get-go, there would be no case. but if they hid that the potential to get brain disease existed, and the consumers drank the OJ not knowing the fullrisk, then the suit can exist for what is basically consumer fraud and negligence and that can be linked to provable damages.
this plaintiff was obviously able to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that smoking caused his lung cancer, and his lung cancer caused his death.
though i dont know all the facts of the case, im assuming they also had to prove that had he known smoking was as dangerous as it is, he wuoldn've quit, or wouldn't have started in the first place

Oh wait I think the protection from lawsuits were from the states themselves.

So maybe thats why no one has held them accountable for lying under oath if they did.

I don't know where you are getting the SCHIP thing kranky, the tobacco company pays the damages not the state. Can you elaborate?

But how do you prove the company "knowingly hid the danger"?

The warnings went on in the 60s right? Before that no one knew there was danger. So how did the companies hide it?

In florida, the class action was dismissed by the fla. supreme court, but it upheld the fact that the tobacco companies DID knowingly hide the effects. so it dismissed that particular case, but not the whole issue. so in fla., there never was an award for damages.

The companies suppressed information from early studies before the warnings went on. That's how they did it. They lied.

What was that Russell Crowe movie about how the tobacco companies hid the real effects of smoking?

Sure! SCHIPS is being funded by a tobacco tax. There was seriousy criticism on that because everyone assumes that the amount of funding will go down as the price of tobacco rises (from things like additional taxes and lawsuits).

It's just kinda ironic to me.

Maybe the studies weren't entirely conclusive and they wanted more time.

The only smoking movie I know is Thank You for Smoking which is on my Top 5 favorite movies ever!

I just want to add that, don't get me wrong, the guy is an idiot for smoking all those years. He got what he deserved, he died way early from a very painful disease.

"What was that Russell Crowe movie about how the tobacco companies hid the real effects of smoking?"

The Insider, I believe. And it was 'based' on what happened. It's not a very realistic rendering at all.... kinda like that movie about the mining women with Charlize Theron.

That movie was awesome, I love Aaron Eckhart