FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A jury in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has awarded the family of a deceased smoker more than $75 million in damages against four tobacco companies, the Associated Press reported. The verdict Thursday came in the case of Johnnie Calloway, a smoker who died in 1992. His widow and daughter sued Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group, blaming his death on an "unbreakable" cigarette habit.
The case is one of thousands proceeding in Florida courts. They are being tried individually because the state Supreme Court in 2006 tossed out a $145 billion class-action verdict. That ruling also said smokers and their families need only prove addiction to cigarettes and that smoking caused their illnesses or deaths.
The verdict for Calloway is one of the largest so far in the wave of more than 7,000 tobacco lawsuits filed in Florida courts as a result of the 2006 state Supreme Court ruling, added a report by The Sun-Sentinel.
A Broward Circuit Court jury found the tobacco companies responsible for $20.5 million in compensatory damages and another $54.85 million in punitive damages.
Calloway, a father of eight, had smoked up to three packs a day until his death in 1992 at the age of 59, the newspaper said.
Steve Callahan, a PM USA spokesperson, told the paper that the company will appeal.
The Calloway lawsuit is a byproduct of the Florida Supreme Court's ruling in Engle v. Liggett, a class-action case in which a Miami-Dade County jury leveled a $145 billion verdict--then thought to be the largest punitive damage award in American legal history--against five tobacco companies. The state Supreme Court tossed out the monetary damages, but ruled ill smokers and the families of deceased smokers could file individual lawsuits with the Miami-Dade jury's findings about the health risks of cigarettes already established.
So far, 63 lawsuits arising from the Engle ruling have gone to trial with 43 resulting in verdicts for the plaintiffs, Edward Sweda, senior attorney with the anti-smoking Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law, told the Sun-Sentinel.
The verdicts have been as high as $300 million with the Calloway case one of the 10 biggest, Scott Schlesinger, one of the attorneys for the Calloway family, told the paper.
Callahan said that since the beginning of 2011, PM USA has been involved in 17 Engle cases with about two-thirds resulting in either defense verdicts or mistrials.
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