Judge Rules Out Tobacco Firms’ Defense Strategy

The judge in Florida’s sick-smokers case Friday snuffed out cigarette makers’ plans to sway jurors with evidence on the harm massive punitive damages could do to convenience-shop owners and factory workers.

Bracing for a punitive damages verdict possibly totaling billions of dollars, tobacco companies had sought to present evidence to jurors in coming weeks that Big Tobacco has improved its sales practices and had already suffered substantial losses in legal settlements.

Six jurors were scheduled to begin hearing arguments and evidence Monday in the third and final phase of the high-stakes Engle trial in Miami on behalf of an estimated 500,000 sick smokers in Florida.

The same jurors last year found Philip Morris, maker of Marlboros, and other cigarette makers liable for fraud, conspiracy and the lung cancer and other ailments of the smokers.

In April, the jurors awarded $12.7 million to a nurse, a woodworker and a widower for pain, suffering and other actual losses. The total to the three, standing as representatives of all the plaintiffs, was the highest yet awarded to sick smokers for actual losses.

Judge Robert Kaye of Miami-Dade County Circuit Court refused in written rulings to allow tobacco-industry lawyers to present evidence on industry donations to charities or the harm stinging punitive damages would do to ad revenues at African-American newspapers or the incomes of tobacco farmers and workers in cigarette factories or warehouses.