Tobacco companies were handed back-to-back victories in a South Florida appeals court this month, and a lawyer was admonished for calling RJ Reynolds “an enterprise of death.”
In two consecutive rulings, RJ Reynolds persuaded the 4th District Court of Appeal to overturn a $10 million verdict in Broward County while upholding a ruling in Palm Beach County that allowed jurors to penalize plaintiffs for destroying medical records before filing their lawsuits.
$10 million damages quashed
In the Broward case, Deborah Neff’s mother, a smoker, died in 1994. Neff sued RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris for concealing the dangers of cigarette use. The case went to trial in 2019 and Neff was awarded $4 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in punitive damages.
But the appeals court ruled for RJ Reynolds, overturning the $10 million judgment and sending the case back for a retrial.
Neff’s attorneys at the Schlesinger Law Offices in Fort Lauderdale did not return calls for comment on the ruling. The firm has won numerous victories against tobacco companies, including a possible landmark case in 2019 involving what may be the first judgment awarded to a same-sex spouse.
That case is also up for appeal.
In Neff’s case, the appeals court felt the lawyers went too far vilifying the tobacco companies in front of the jury.
“Neff’s counsel encouraged the jury ‘to punish a wayward corporation that has erred, that has lost its moral compass, that has acted as an evildoer and a wrongdoer for decades,'” the appeals court decision said, quoting from the trial transcript. “Neff’s counsel referred to appellants as ‘an enterprise of death.'”
The judge on the case overruled the objection from the tobacco company lawyers.
“The numerous improper arguments cause us to doubt the overall fairness of the trial proceedings,” the appeals court ruled. “As a result, all the time and effort that was put into this trial was for naught.”
No new trial date has been set.
Shredded medical records prove costly
In the Palm Beach case, the cancer victim, Jacklyn Adamson, died in 1993. RJ Reynolds won that case by arguing there was not enough medical evidence more than two decades after her death to tie her illness to her daily 50-cigarette smoking habit.
Adamson’s husband admitted shredding relevant medical records a decade after her death, figuring they would no longer be needed, according to court records. The decision to sue RJ Reynolds came later.
The husband died before the case went to trial. Their daughter appealed the verdict, with her lawyers saying the jury should not have been able to read negatively into the shredding of old medical records.
The 4th District Court of Appeal upheld the jury’s Palm Beach verdict on Wednesday.
“The jury should consider all the circumstances and may, but is not required to, infer that the missing records would be unfavorable to the party who destroyed them,” the appeals court judges wrote in their opinion.
