Cigarette Maker Wins Key Victory in Asbestos Suit : Court: A jury in Chicago rejects a widow’s claim that Kent’s filter caused her husband’s fatal cancer.

Cigarette maker Lorillard Inc. won a key victory in a wrongful death case Friday when a federal court jury in Chicago rejected a widow’s claim that asbestos in the original filter of Kent cigarettes caused her husband’s fatal cancer.

Capping a nearly four-week trial, jurors found Lorillard and a co-defendant not liable for the death of Norman Braun from mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer whose only significant known cause is asbestos exposure. An attorney representing Saralee Braun said the decision will be appealed.

“Disappointed, devastated--pick your adjective,” said the attorney, Rick M. Schoenfield, in response to the verdict. “We thought we had proven our case.”

Braun, a former Encyclopaedia Britannica executive who died last winter, allegedly smoked Lorillard’s Kent brand from 1952 to 1956, when its “Micronite” filter contained crocidolite--a particularly virulent type of asbestos.

The defense victory was the fifth in six trials involving claims of death or illness from asbestos in the Kent filter. After winning the first four cases, Lorillard and Hollingsworth & Vose Co.--supplier of the filter material--suffered a stunning loss in September, when a San Francisco jury ordered them to pay $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Milton Horowitz, a former Kent smoker and mesothelioma victim.

An attorney for Lorillard hailed the Braun verdict as particularly important, saying the outcome had more scientific support than was available in the prior cases. Lorillard, a subsidiary of Loews Corp., makes Newport, True and other brands in addition to Kent.

In previous cases, jurors had to infer whether--or how much--crocidolite asbestos Kent smokers inhaled, said William S. Ohlemeyer of Shook, Hardy & Bacon of Kansas City, Mo., a leading tobacco defense firm.

But in this case, Ohlemeyer said, experts were able to analyze tissue from Braun’s lung for microscopic asbestos fibers. “I think it’s a fact that more people looked at more of this lung more times than perhaps any other lung that has previously [been] studied,” he said.

Although they did find asbestos fibers in the lung, defense experts testified that they did not find crocidolite--the type used in the cigarette filters. Moreover, the defense contended, at least two experts consulted by attorneys for the Brauns also searched fruitlessly for crocidolite fibers.

But testimony by one expert who said he did find crocidolite was ruled inadmissible by U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning, on grounds the test method was not reliable enough.

Schoenfield said he will appeal on several grounds, including Manning’s exclusion of the tissue analysis that favored his side.

About 10 more Kent cases are pending nationwide. Dan Childs, whose Philadelphia law firm has been involved in most of the cases, predicted there will be more.

“I think the evidence is overwhelming that they [Lorillard] were involved in wrongdoing . . . that Lorillard knew this stuff [asbestos] was coming out,” Childs said.