NEWS ANALYSIS : More Cigarette Makers to Be Found Liable, Experts Predict

Jurors are angry over internal tobacco industry memos about the addictive nature of nicotine and will increasingly find cigarette companies liable for smokers’ illnesses, jury consultants predicted Monday.

They said a Florida jury’s verdict on Friday against the industry, which was only the second time a tobacco company has been ordered to pay damages, signaled the end of the industry’s long winning streak.

Instead of holding smokers solely responsible for their habits, jurors are beginning to blame the tobacco companies for cigarette addiction.

“Friday was doomsday for the tobacco industry,” said Amy Singer, president of Miami-based Trial Consultants Inc. “It’s like the bomb has dropped.”

If the predictions by the consultants, many of whom are psychologists, are correct, the results could be disastrous for the industry. The lawyer in the Florida case has filed about 200 individual suits in that state alone and the number of class-action cases is rising across the country.

Lawyers predict the plaintiff’s victory on Friday will only generate more litigation.

In addition, 10 states have sued the industry seeking to recoup health-care costs of smokers and several more have said they would take similar action.

The Jacksonville, Fla., jury awarded $750,000 to a man who smoked for 44 years before he was stricken with lung cancer five years ago. The six-member jury said the Lucky Strikes he smoked were a defective product and that the cigarettes’ maker, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., was negligent by failing to inform the public about health risks of smoking.

The verdict contrasted with many other decisions over the years in which juries repeatedly refused to hold tobacco companies liable for smokers’ illnesses. Instead, almost every panel found that it was an individual’s choice to smoke and that by doing so, he or she accepted the risks of continuing the habit.

The tobacco industry, which maintains that nicotine is not addictive, said the verdict was an “aberration” and that it expected the finding would be reversed on appeal.

Jury consultants said that although the verdict may very well lose on technical grounds, it will not stop future juries from finding for plaintiffs in the future.

“The most profound difference [in Friday’s verdict] is that jurors no longer see this as a matter of choice . . . the fact this jury has sent a message to the world that they are willing to hold tobacco companies liable is a dramatic and significant result. It’s not a fluke. It’s not an aberration,” said Robert Gordon, director of the Dallas-based Wilmington Institute.

Robert Hirschhorn, who heads Galveston, Texas-based Cathy E. Bennett & Associates, added: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all of the time and I really think there is an awakening in America in terms of this kind of litigation.”

Gordon and Singer, whose firms have provided jury research to plaintiffs’ lawyers handling tobacco cases, said attitudes had gradually been changing over the last decade but that the internal tobacco documents that have come to light since 1994 have had the most dramatic impact on potential jurors.

They said the documents, particularly those that make it appear that the industry knew that nicotine is addictive, generate strong emotional responses from groups of mock jurors.

Singer said the documents can turn potential jurors into a “lynch mob.”

“There is shock and distress. They [documents] villainize the tobacco companies in a way heretofore nobody perceived or understood,” Gordon said.

“Those who are smokers get angry. Those who do not smoke but live with or love people who smoke are angry because they see their loved ones have been manipulated.”