Plaintiff in $21.7-Million Suit Against Tobacco Firms Dies

Cancer patient Leslie J. Whiteley, the Ojai resident who in March won a $21.7-million jury award from tobacco companies for her addiction to cigarettes and resulting health problems, died Monday at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.

Whiteley, 40, died of lung cancer that had spread to her brain and liver. She had said she expected to die before her family saw any money, and according to Whiteley’s lawyers, no money has changed hands. The trial judge upheld the jury award; the companies plan to appeal.

Lawyers for Philip Morris Inc. and R.J. Reynolds argued that Whiteley should have known the potential dangers of smoking cigarettes. Warning labels were already in place, they noted, and they said Whiteley was an intelligent woman who should have been aware of risks.

Whiteley said she bought her first pack of cigarettes with lunch money at 13, and smoked a pack and a half a day by 19. Her attorney, Madelyn Chaber, called her the “unfortunate victim of the tobacco companies’ intentional targeting of children.”

“Thirteen-year-olds have no common sense, nor do they have the capability of making a lifelong decision of smoking,” Whiteley wrote in an e-mail interview three months ago. “I say lifelong because once you’re addicted, you can’t just stop because a cigarette package says so.”

Chaber called Whiteley a courageous woman who touched a lot of people’s hearts. As of Wednesday, no funeral date or site had been set, Chaber said. Private services will be held next week, Leslie’s husband, Leonard, said Wednesday.

He said the family is enduring a roller coaster of emotions in the wake of his wife’s death. Too many people forgot she was human, he added.

“What I remember of her was the beautiful smile she had, her long, beautiful hair and her personality of helping other people,” he said. “She wanted to help other people--that was her main goal--but she loved her children and was a good mother.”

In addition to her husband, Whiteley is survived by children ages 11, 9, 6 and 3. The family will continue her public struggle against tobacco companies’ marketing strategies, Leonard Whiteley said, the same strategies that his wife told him first lured her to smoke.

Whiteley quit smoking in February 1998, but she was diagnosed with cancer four months later.