Ex-Smoker Wins Suit Over Asbestos Filters

In a verdict called a breakthrough in litigation against the tobacco industry, a jury awarded $2 million to an ex-smoker who blamed asbestos-laced cigarette filters for his cancer.

The asbestos lawsuit by 72-year-old Milton Horowitz circumvented a state law banning lawsuits against tobacco companies for smoking-related illness or death.

“If this one holds up, this is really a pioneering approach,” American Cancer Society spokeswoman Helen Jones said Friday, after the jury added $700,000 in punitive damages to the $1.3 million in compensatory damages given Thursday. “It’s very encouraging.”

Horowitz alleged that Lorillard Tobacco Co. and filter maker Hollingsworth & Vose exposed him to asbestos in the filters of Kent cigarettes. The Los Angeles man has mesothelioma, a type of cancer frequently caused by asbestos.

The American Cancer Society said it was only the second time a tobacco company lost a lawsuit over use of its products. A federal judge threw out the verdict in the first case, filed in 1983 in New Jersey.

Lorillard defeated four previous lawsuits about the filters, said William Ohlemeyer, lawyer for the company.

“It is important to note that this is not a smoking and health case, nor one which will have any impact on the defense of smoking and health cases,” the company said in a statement.

The company will appeal, Ohlemeyer said.