CONNOR 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.
- 05/03/97 Jury to Decide Landmark Case The New York Times (Free Registration)
- 05/03/97 Send a Message, Jury Urged MSNBC
- 05/03/97 Jurors Begin Deliberations Jurors deliberate 2 hours, then go home for the weekend. Miami Herald
- 05/03/97 Bloomberg Winston-Salem Journal
- 05/03/97 Washington Post
- 05/03/97 AP Fox News
- 05/02/97 Reuters
- 05/03/97 Ex-Juror: Smoker Knew Risk [Jacksonville] Florida Times-Union
- Sandra Grant was "shocked" by the medical evidence she heard about the dangers of smoking during her 2 1/2 weeks on a Jacksonville jury hearing a wrongful death trial. But the former juror in the case against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said she wouldn't have awarded damages to the family of deceased smoker Jean Connor or imposed punitive damages on the cigarette maker.
- "It was never about the money," Carter said in an interview. "I was just hoping it would be the start of a trend. I wanted the worm to turn on the tobacco companies."
- "We're asking you to send a message to R.J. Reynolds. . . It is wrong to sell a poisonous product as if it is a package of springtime. . . If they told the truth, people would believe the cigarette industry."
- Was there negligence on the part of defendant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. which was a legal cause of the death of decedent Jean Connor? . . . Were the cigarettes manufactured by defendant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. unreasonably dangerous and defective and a legal cause of the death of decedent Jean Connor?
- [The industry is] "committed to an ill-defined middle ground which is articulated by variations on the theme that the case is not proved. . . And best of all, it would only have to be seen - not read - to be believed."
- Anytime anything happened -- you get stressed out, nervous, you finished eating, the minute you get out of bed, after you had sex, the first thing I reached for was a cigarette," she said in the deposition. "You get this craving where you need to smoke a cigarette, and you usually smoke what you are craving the most," she said.
- [Sanford] Barsky, a UCLA professor, testified that it was impossible to determine the source of the lung cancer that killed Jean Connor because no autopsy was performed when she died Oct. 1, 1995. "Just because somebody smokes and develops a particular cancer doesn't mean the two are related," Barsky testified.
- "It was really quite alarming," said jury forewoman Laura Barrow, 26, a former smoker. "We really were letting R.J. Reynolds off the hook." . . . The jurors answered no to the first two questions they were asked: Was Reynolds negligent? And were the company's cigarettes dangerous and defective, and did they kill Connor? The judge told the panel Reynolds didn't have a responsibility to warn Connor about the risks of smoking if those risks were widely known - even before warning labels appeared on cigarette packs in the mid-'60s. Jurors said that was obvious and cited testimony from Lacy Ford, a University of South Carolina historian who appeared on Reynolds' behalf. . . "We had a hard moral dilemma on our hands in that we thought R.J. Reynolds knew more than they were telling and should have told," said Barrow, a CSX marketing analyst. ". . . Had they asked different questions [on the verdict form], possibly, there would have been a different outcome."
- 05/09/97 OPINION: Objectivity is Important Florida Times-Union
- Many jurors disliked the tobacco company, but the judge told them to absolve it if the dangers of smoking were commonly known. They followed those instructions, basing their decision on evidence rather than emotion. "It was all we could do logically," a juror said of the verdict. That may not be politically correct, but it is admirable. Other juries should strive to be as conscientious.
- Tobacco won this week, but it knows the real score. People are deciding that the risks known to the individual smoker should pale next to big tobacco's responsibility for starting the chain reaction of death. The truth is beginning to stop the lies. One day, the industry may no longer be the respected patron of the arts and politicians. It will be just a murderer.
- The Florida verdict . . . puts the brakes on a process that seemed to be moving in the right direction. The recent revelations by Liggett and the tobacco industry's apparent defensive posture at the negotiating table have powerful potential to shift public opinion, but they are so new to the public consciousness that they haven't sunk in yet. We can only hope the public gets the message sooner rather than too late.
- The bottom-line fact remains that smoking is a personal choice. There is and has been plenty of disclosure about the health risks and other hazards of smoking. Freedom means not only the freedom to do wise things, but the freedom to do foolish things -- provided no one else is harmed. If we allow the government to decide in ever more situations which of our actions are wise and which are foolish, then freedom itself is threatened.
- The Connor verdict is a reminder that society has little sympathy for the self-destructive. The tobacco industry will not be brought to its knees by a stream of sick smokers asking for money. But the industry should be forced to take responsibility for the harm it does to the public, which is made up mostly of non-smokers. It must be regulated. It must be forced to stop marketing to children. And it must be billed for the public cost of treating smoking-related illness.
- Jean Connor may have killed herself by choosing to smoke, but her death was aided and abetted by an industry that didn't mind corpses piling up as long as they were replaced by fresh, young smokers. The tobacco industry should suffer the consequences of its own behavior.
- Jurors . . . had little doubt that smoking caused the lung-cancer death of Jean Connor at the age of 49, and they were incensed by Reynolds. But they felt they were legally bound to clear the company of any liability at the end of the monthlong trial on Monday. "We couldn't stand the fact that RJR was not being held responsible for anything," says 26-year-old Laura Barrow, the youngest of the six jurors and herself a former smoker. However, she explains, a scrupulous reading of the judge's instructions dictated a defense verdict.
- 05/08/97 Jurors Unhappy with RJR Verdict The WSJ story is online at Winston-Salem Journal
- 05/07/97 Reuters Item
- 05/06/97 Big Victory for Tobacco Raulerson Calls Tobacco Officials "Liars." CNNfn
- 05/06/97 No Surprise: Verdict Playes Well in Winston-Salem, NC Winston-Salem Journal
- 05/06/97 MSNBC item You can hear audio clips the verdict being read, and of Dana Raulerson.
- 05/06/97 Miami Herald Item Plus, download the c. 400k Schindler Deposition or Spears Deposition from Rosenblatt's Engle case. Word format also available.
- 05/05/97 CONNOR Jury Finds RJR Not Liable Jurors take 8 hours to find " cigarettes made by RJR were not dangerous and defective and did not cause the death of Jean Connor . . . "
- 05/05/97 Jury Clears RJR Reuters
- 05/05/97 Jury Finds No Negligence Reuters
- 05/05/97 Verdict is Like Watching Sister Die Again--Raulerson Reuters
- 05/06/97 Winston-Salem Journal item
- 05/06/97 LA Times item
- 05/06/97 NY Times Item
- 05/05/97 Wall St. Journal item (Pay Registration)
- The jury was instructed to award compensatory damages to Connor's three children, under Florida law, if they found Reynolds even 1% responsible.
- "RJR and Philip Morris' bonds improved by about five basis points after news of the tobacco verdict hit the market," said one high-grade trader. RJR's 8.75 percent paper due 2005 tightened to a 240 bid, 225 offer, traders said.
- Although there are probably many reasons for the loss, some jurors said they felt that cigarette companies should share some responsibility for the death and disability they cause, but that the judge's instructions precluded them from making the award.
- As the jury forewoman, it was my job to hand the verdict to the bailiff. I was so nervous that I was shaking. . . But we weren't asked to make an emotional judgment; we were asked to make a legal decision, based on the evidence and the law. . . We all agreed that Reynolds had disregarded a moral responsibility to its customers. The company knew cigarettes can cause lung cancer; it chose not to disclose this and even raised doubts about it. But Reynolds's actions did not negate the fact that the risks were widely known. Did this release Reynolds from all liability? Not in our minds. But that question was not on our verdict form. . .According to the judge's instructions, a manufacturer has a duty to warn consumers if the risks of a product are better known to the company than to the consumer. But, we were told, a manufacturer does not have a duty to warn if the hazards are "common knowledge."
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