BROIN Trial News on the Web
Archive, May, 1997
Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.
- In the eyes of Big Tobacco, Miami attorney Stanley Rosenblatt is the Mouth That Roared. His latest production will make its debut Sunday night on CBS's 60 Minutes, when he shows a videotaped deposition of a tobacco company executive comparing cigarette addiction to a craving for Gummy Bears. . . In a state court filing Friday, lawyers for Philip Morris asked a Dade judge to impose a gag order on Rosenblatt. They want him barred from conducting news conferences, granting interviews or making public comments about the evidence in a national class-action lawsuit brought by airline flight attendants who say that second-hand smoke made them sick. . . The companies' main concern: Rosenblatt has been so active that the industry will not be able to find impartial juries in a pair of class-action lawsuits scheduled to go to trial this summer in Dade Circuit Court.
- The ruling resulted from a hearing Monday in which the tobacco companies had asked Dade County Judge Robert Kaye to divide the trial, first having a jury consider whether second-hand smoke causes diseases and later determining the industry's liability. . . "In order to conserve precious court time and to expedite the trial of the issues, it has become apparent that this case should be decided in stages and phases which would include 'special verdicts' and 'general verdicts,'" Kaye wrote.
- 05/19/97 BROIN: Judge Denies Tobacco Bid to Delay Trial Reuters
- 05/19/97 BROIN: Lawyers Argue Jury Queries Reuters
- Potential jurors in a class-action lawsuit over the consequences of breathing secondhand cigarette smoke may be asked questions ranging from their personal smoking histories to their ownership of land in tobacco-producing states, a Florida judge said on Monday.
- Nearly 250 potential jurors filled out questionnaires on Wednesday and Thursday, presiding Dade County Judge Robert Kaye said at a pretrial hearing.
- Norma Broin . . . remembers the days when aircraft ventilation systems became so overwhelmed with cigarette smoke that the air would turn blue. "Those gas-permeable contact lenses, oh yeah, they turned yellow. Your eyes would sting, you'd have headaches, your chest would burn," she said in an interview. "You would ask the captain to turn the 'No Smoking' sign on for a while so that people would stop smoking. We would actually go up in the cockpit and use some of the pilot's oxygen," she said. But it took a bout of lung cancer to make Broin, a political conservative and lifetime non-smoker, angry enough to mount a legal challenge against the cigarette companies she considers responsible for those working conditions -- and for her disease.
- When the landmark flight attendants tobacco case goes to trial next week, a mom-and-pop legal team from Miami Beach will be trying to bring down one of the world's richest and most powerful industries. In Dade County's 1920s-era courthouse, Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, parents of nine children and owners of a modest legal practice, will argue that the $45 billion tobacco industry has for decades defrauded the American public.
- 05/28/97 Tobacco Asks for Summary Judgement Reuters
- In arguing a tobacco industry motion for summary judgment on allegations that the companies committed fraud and conspiracy, attorney Hugh Whiting said the flight attendants had failed to prove that any statement made by a specific tobacco executive had any impact on decisions made by any specific flight attendant. "There is no evidence in this case, no factual evidence in this case ... that anybody made a misstatement to anyone," said Whiting, who represents RJ Reynolds. . .
- Plaintiff lawyers may use at next week's secondhand-smoke trial 16 confidential documents taken from a law firm by a paralegal working for Brown & Williamson, the U.S. tobacco arm of B.A.T Industries, a Florida judge ruled on Tuesday. But Dade County Court Judge Robert Kaye said 12 other Brown & Williamson documents plaintiff lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosbenblatt had sought may not be used at the trial scheduled to begin on Monday. . . "On the basis of these documents, I don't think I can give you a crime-fraud exception."
- One of the documents that a Florida judge ruled Tuesday could be used by plaintiffs in an upcoming secondhand smoke trial is a 1963 memo in which former Brown & Williamson general counsel Addison Yeaman indicated nicotine was an addictive drug.
- Full transcripts of depositions of tobacco chief executives and other evidence to be presented at next week's milestone secondhand-smoke trial will be kept from the public, a Florida judge has ruled. The ruling also covers video recordings of depositions, or pre-trial questioning, and other exhibits to be introduced during trial, Dade County Circuit Court Judge Robert Kaye said in a one-page order released on Tuesday but signed last week.
- The nationwide war over tobacco now shifts to South Florida, where three extraordinary lawsuits will be fought during the next few months. Virtually every American tobacco company is a combatant in each case.
- 05/30/97 BROIN: Judge to Remove "No Smoking" Signs Reuters
- "I learned very early in my career 'Always check the jury room,'" Dade County Circuit Judge Robert Kaye told a pre-trial hearing on Friday. So he did, touring the jury room and noting the red signs adorning not just the room where jurors assemble and wait to be called, but also the only bathrooms available to them. "I intend to take those signs down . . . It could be prejudicial." . . Susan Rosenblatt, an attorney for the plaintiffs, an estimated 60,000 flight attendants who claim they were sickened by secondhand tobacco smoke, asked how the jurors would know they are not supposed to smoke if all the signs are removed. "I'm sure that someone will tell them," Kaye said.
- An attorney for B.A.T Industries Plc unit Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp said Friday the company will appeal a Florida judge's ruling allowing plaintiffs in the Broin secondhand-smoke lawsuit to use 16 confidential documents taken from a law firm working for the company.
- The Florida judge in the Broin secondhand-smoke lawsuit on Thursday said he may undo the class-action status of the case, a move that would likely delay the start of a trial, scheduled for Monday. Dade County Circuit Court Judge Robert Kaye said during a hearing that even if tobacco companies were found liable by a jury for injuries caused by secondhand smoke, the claims of an estimated 60,000 plaintiffs might be too cumbersome for a single trial. Kaye said determining the direct linkage of secondhand smoke to individual ailments and setting the amounts due each of the non-smoking flight attendants covered by the Broin suit might be nearly impossible.
- 05/29/97 Lawyers Edgy as BROIN Trial Approaches Miami Herald
- Tempers flaring as the trial date looms, attorneys for the tobacco industry and the flight attendants who are suing it argued vigorously Wednesday -- in front of the judge and after he left the courtroom. "It's going to be a long trial," opposing lawyers snapped at each other during a break in now daily pretrial hearings.
- Nearly a dozen law firms from South Florida are poised to
represent several thousand flight attendants who claim that secondhand smoking aboard airliners made them seriously ill. But first, they
must await a ruling by a state appellate court here on the settlement of a 7-year-old class action that will allow individual lawsuits to proceed.
. . But under the proposed settlement, the industry agreed to shoulder the burden of proof in future individual cases brought by attendants.
It also agreed to waive the statute of limitations. Moreover, a number of law firms stepped forward to indicate that they would represent
attendants in their cases. Miami's KLUGER, PERETZ, KAPLAN & BERLIN P.A. is coordinating the effort, which includes ANGONES, HUNTER,
MCCLURE, LYNCH & WILLIAMS P.A., also of Miami.
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