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In affirming the trial court’s judgment of dismissal, we hold that the final adjudication on the merits of plaintiff’s loss-of-consortium claim against defendant results in a res judicata bar of plaintiff’s subsequent wrongful death action for loss-ofconsortium damages against defendant arising from the same injury to plaintiff’s spouse that was the basis of the adjudicated loss-of-consortium claim. . . .
Finally, plaintiff argues that applying res judicata to bar her wrongful death action would deprive her of due process because, when she dismissed her loss-of-consortium claim in 2001, she had no “tenable basis” to believe she could assert a claim for loss-ofconsortium damages caused by Mr. Boeken’s death. Civil Code section 3283, however, has authorized tort plaintiffs to recover prospective damages since 1872. Furthermore, plaintiff, in her loss-of-consortium complaint, alleged that Mr. Boeken would be unable “to perform [his] work, services, and duties in the future,” and that she had been “permanently deprived” of his consortium. She thus not only had a “tenable basis” to assert a claim for loss-of-consortium damages for the remainder of Mr. Boeken’s expected lifespan, but she in fact asserted such a claim.
20
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Philip Morris is to recover its costs on appeal.
I respectfully dissent. In my view, the demurrer should not have been sustained because the prior dismissal of the common law consortium loss claim of plaintiff, Judy Boeken, does not bar her from recovering any damages sustained after her husband’s death. No doubt, there are res judicata consequences of plaintiff’s dismissal of her prior common law consortium loss complaint. But I disagree with the assertion of defendant, Phillip Morris USA, Inc., that the dismissal of the prior common law consortium loss claim bars any recovery on plaintiff’s statutory wrongful death cause of action. . . .
No doubt, plaintiff may be barred from pursuing any damages for pre-death injury. Her dismissal of her common law consortium loss claim may potentially bar any claim for pre-death losses. But as to plaintiff’s post-death claims, she may pursue them in her statutory wrongful death cause of action.
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A Los Angeles judge ruled in favor of a 15-year-old boy on an issue related to his lawsuit against Philip Morris, which he claims is liable in the death of his father, a longtime smoker, court papers showed Monday.
Dylan Boeken's father, Richard Boeken, made headlines in 2001 when he won a $3 billion judgment against Philip Morris USA Inc. -- a sum subsequently cut to $55 million.
A Los Angeles judge today began pondering just how much evidence a lawyer needed to present to a jury to prove a 15-year-old boy's wrongful death case against a tobacco giant on behalf of his father.
Richard Boeken died in January 2002 at age 57, seven months after the verdict in his case. The disease had spread to his spine and brain.
Boeken's widow, Judy, and son filed a wrongful death case against Philip Morris on June 2.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David L. Minning issued a nine-page ruling in February in which he threw out Judy Boeken's claims entirely, but gave her son a chance to revise his complaint.
The lawsuit was modified, and the boy's lawsuit is set for trial Oct. 29.
Dylan Boeken's lawyer, Michael J. Piuze, maintains most of the issues in the case were decided in the first trial. He said the jury should only have to determine if Boeken died of lung cancer and, if so, what his son's damages are.
Philip Morris wants a complete trial on all the issues.
Minning did not make a final ruling today and took the case under submission.
Although cigarette makers have agreed to some major settlements, including $246 billion to end lawsuits by the states, in more than 50 years of litigation, they have had to write checks to only a handful of individual smokers.
The Boeken award -- consisting of $5.54 million in compensatory damages, $50 million in punitive damages and more than $26 million in interest -- will be the largest recovery by an individual to date.
It will eclipse the previous record payment of $16.7 million last year to a former smoker from Glendale. Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group Inc. and the top U.S. cigarette maker, lost that case too.
It will eclipse the previous record payment of $16.7 million last year to a former smoker from Glendale. Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group Inc. and the top U.S. cigarette maker, lost that case too. . . .
Ed Sweda, senior attorney for the Boston-based Tobacco Products Liability Project, which encourages lawsuits against the tobacco industry, said the Supreme Court's decision not to accept the appeal "demonstrates that tobacco litigation remains a viable -- and still emerging -- strategy to promote the public health."
Still, the award is a wisp of its original self. Outraged jurors in Los Angeles County Superior Court had ordered Philip Morris to pay Boeken $3 billion in addition to compensatory damages in June 2001 after finding the company guilty of fraud, negligence, misrepresentation and selling a defective product. . . .
Although the court's decision Monday was a victory for the plaintiff, Piuze said he was not satisfied "with the end result, which is a penalty of one half week of earnings" for Philip Morris. . . .
Legal analysts believe that the court may be more likely to consider an appeal of another verdict that went well beyond the 9-to-1 guideline.
It's an Oregon case in which the $80-million award against Philip Morris includes $79.5 million in punitive damages and $521,000 in compensatory damages -- a ratio of more than 152 to 1.
The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the verdict last month, setting the stage for a last-ditch appeal to the nation's highest court.
Altria Group Inc.'s (MO) (MO) Philip Morris USA (MO) unit Monday exhausted its appeals to overturn a $50 million punitive damages award from a deceased smoker lawsuit filed in California.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the tobacco company's appeal without comment. Philip Morris (MO) has already taken a 3 cent-a-share charge to cover the cost of the court award, and now faces the payment, plus interest.
Philip Morris (MO) had asked the high court to rule on whether the punitive damages award in the case was excessive, and whether the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act prevented smokers from suing under a California state law that allows "consumer expectations" claims in product liability cases. But the justices, in a brief order, said they won't entertain either question
The $50 million in punitive damages is from a lawsuit brought by the now deceased Richard Boeken is in addition to $5.5 million in actual damages. Boeken's widow will receive the award. . . .
The 9-1 ratio of punitive damages to actual damages is at the outside edge of guidance the Supreme Court offered in its 2003 State Farm punitive damages decision. But Philip Morris (MO) argued the California award violated the precedent set by the State Farm opinion.
It is simply untenable, after State Farm, to assert than an award producing a ratio of greater than 9:1 comports with due process in this case, especially in light of the substantial compensatory damages imposed.Philip Morris, in its Boeken appeal to the US Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review on Monday a $50 million punitive damages award against Altria Group Inc's Philip Morris unit in the case of a longtime smoker who was diagnosed with lung cancer and then died.
The lawsuit against the tobacco company had been filed in California state court by Richard Boeken, who said he smoked two packs of Marlboro cigarettes a day for decades. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999, he was 57 when he died in 2002. . . .
Philip Morris told the high court it cannot be held liable under state law for failing to provide additional warnings about the dangers of smoking, beyond what is required under the federally mandated warning labels on cigarette packs.
The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act pre-empts such state law claims, it said. The lawsuit cited the product liability theory, known as the "consumer expectations test," that cigarettes were more dangerous than consumers realized, despite the warnings on each pack.
Philip Morris also said the $50 million punitive damages award to a single plaintiff was "unconstitutionally excessive." The company's appeal was supported by the Chamber of Commerce business group. . . .
The Supreme Court rejected both appeals without any comment or recorded dissent.
A jury in Los Angeles awarded Boeken a record $3 billion in punitive damages and $5.5 million in compensatory damages. The trial judge then reduced the punitive damages award to $100 million.
Unsatisfied with legal rulings that spared it from paying billions of dollars in damages, Philip Morris wants the US Supreme Court to snuff out a lung cancer victim's civil suit, a lawyer said.
The international cigarette purveyor has asked a judge for permission to delay paying the dead smoker's wife until the nation's top court has a chance to review the civil suit.
Richard Boeken's civil trial with Philip Morris ended in 2001 with a jury awarding him 5.5 million dollars in compensation and three billion in punitive damages. . . .
"I was trying to get back 2.95 billion dollars which had been ripped away from us," Piuze said of the fight to have the case reviewed.
"When you catch someone committing a major fraud, you punish them for all the other times they got away with it." . . .
"I think that, generally, when it comes to major issues that affect tens of thousands of people, the court system is more inclined to hear what business has to say than what human beings have to say," Piuze said.
"I think that is just the way it was set up."
Philip Morris USA said Thursday that it would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a California ruling that has brought the company a step closer to paying record damages to the widow of a deceased smoker.
The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to hear an appeal of a $55.4-million judgment against the top U.S. cigarette maker, a unit of Altria Group Inc. In June 2001, Philip Morris was found guilty of negligence and fraud in a lawsuit filed by Topanga resident Richard Boeken, a former Marlboro smoker then afflicted with lung cancer who died a few months later at 57.
Unless the U.S. high court agrees to intervene, Philip Morris will have to pay the judgment, plus at least $20 million in interest, to his widow, Judy Boeken.
Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris USA must pay $50 million to the family of a smoker who died of lung cancer, the California Supreme Court ruled, rejecting the company's request to reduce the punitive damage award.
The court declined requests by both the smoker's family and the company to review the award, which had been reduced from $3 billion to $100 million and then to $50 million. The court didn't give a reason for its decision.
The United States Supreme Court has also provided three guideposts? for such review: (1) the degree or reprehensibility of the defendants misconduct, (2) the disparity between the harm (or potential harm) suffered by the plaintiff and the punitive damages award, and (3) the difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases.? . . .
The trial court, reviewing the motion for new trial pursuant to California and federal law, concluded that Philip Morriss conduct was in fact reprehensible in every sense of the word, both legal and moral.? We agree. . .
The very conduct that injured Boeken was directed at all smokers in the United States, repeated over many years with knowledge of the risk to human life and health, and is probative of intentional deceit. The national marketing of a defective product, knowing that ordinary consumers expect it to be less hazardous, knowing that thousands of people will die due to their addiction, is probative of a willful and conscious disregard of the danger to human life. (See State Farm, supra, 538 U.S. at pp. 423-424.) We find that a sufficient nexus has been shown here with Philip Morriss conduct in the other states, whether lawful or unlawful, to consider the evidence on the issue of reprehensibility. (See id. at p. 422.) . . .
We agree, however, that the MSA does provide Philip Morris with an incentive not to misrepresent the health risks of its products, and not to target underage smokers with its misrepresentations, since it prohibits it from doing so. On the other hand, it does not deter Philip Morris from adding flavorings and chemicals that make its product more addictive and easier to take into the lungs. It does nothing to deter Philip Morris from marketing defective light? cigarettes, knowing that they are more dangerous than the ordinary consumer expects. Given these other incentives and the final punitive damage award in Henley, we conclude that more than a single digit multiplier is not justified. But the extreme reprehensibility of increasing addictiveness by manipulating additives, gaining smokers by fraud, and marketing a product that is more dangerous than ordinary consumers expect, knowing that serious physical injury and death will result in many smokers, does justify a ratio of at least 9 to 1. We round off the figure at $50 million.
The family of a man who died of lung cancer after more than four decades of smoking Marlboro cigarettes is entitled to $50 million in punitive damages, this district's Court of Appeal ruled Friday.
The amount is far less than the $3 billion--the largest jury verdict ever in favor of a single plaintiff, according to news accounts--awarded to Richard Boeken by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury in 2001. But the decision represents a rare defeat for Philip Morris, Inc., which persuaded the California Supreme Court to send the case back to Div. Four after its first decision.
Boeken testified that while he had conquered addictions to heroin, methadone and alcohol, his repeated attempts to quit smoking were unsuccessful. . . .
Boeken, represented by attorney Michael Piuze, said he believed the company's long-standing insistence that cigarettes are not addictive. Jurors agreed, awarding $3 billion in punitive damages and $5.5 million in back pay and general damages.
Judge Charles W. McCoy Jr. cut the award to $100 million, and the Court of Appeal cut that in half. But the same panel, which was instructed to reconsider its ruling in line with an intervening U.S. Supreme Court decision, said Friday that there was no need to cut the award further. . . .
"[T]he extreme reprehensibility of increasing addictiveness by manipulating additives, gaining smokers by fraud, and marketing a product that is more dangerous than ordinary consumers expect, knowing that serious physical injury and death will result in many smokers, does justify a ratio of at least 9 to 1," the justice wrote. "We round off the figure at $50 million."
[T]he extreme reprehensibility of increasing addictiveness by manipulating additives, gaining smokers by fraud, and marketing a product that is more dangerous than ordinary consumers expect, knowing that serious physical injury and death will result in many smokers, does justify a ratio of at least 9 to 1. We round off the figure at $50 million.California Supreme Court, in the Boeken appeal.
Altria Group Inc.'s (MO) Philip Morris USA unit said it will petition the California Supreme Court to review a Tuesday appeals court decision that cut its punitive damages on a tobacco lawsuit by half.
In a press release Wednesday, the tobacco company said the punitive damages on behalf of deceased smoker Richard Boeken are "still wildly excessive" based on the standard of a Supreme Court case that said punitive awards should not generally exceed the amount of compensatory awards.
"Fifty million dollars is less than four days profit for Philip Morris," plaintiff's lawyer Michael Piuze told the Associated Press after Tuesday's ruling. "It's a drop in the bucket. We will ask the California Supreme Court what it thinks."
California appeals court has ruled that a smoker's record-breaking $3 billion punitive damages award against Philip Morris was still "excessive" even after being reduced by a trial judge to $100 million and must be halved again.
The Second District Court of Appeal, a state court in Los Angeles, gave the estate of Richard Boeken the option of accepting the lowered amount of $50 million or going to trial again, according to an opinion published on Tuesday.
Philip Morris said in a statement that the company would appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court.
"The company believes that a $50 million punitive damages award for an individual smoker on top of more than $5 million in compensatory damages is still wildly excessive," William Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris USA vice president and general counsel said. . . .
"We are disappointed in the court's decision.... $50 million is less than four days' profit for Philip Morris," Piuze said. "This fine will not punish it or deter its future conduct that imperils the health and lives of our citizens."
A Los Angeles judge tossed out a jury's $3 billion punitive-damage award against Philip Morris Cos. and said he would order a new trial unless the plaintiff in the case, a longtime smoker with lung cancer, agrees to accept a lower punitive judgment of $100 million.
The judge, Charles W. McCoy Jr. of state Superior Court, wrote in a decision handed down late Thursday that while there was "clear and convincing" evidence that Philip Morris had committed fraud, the punitive damages assessed by the 12-member jury in June were "legally excessive."
In its bid to reverse a $3-billion courtroom defeat in Los Angeles, tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. is mining the colorful past of the plaintiff, Richard Boeken, and arguing that the judge erred in excluding evidence of his three criminal convictions. . .
His lawyer, Michael Piuze, argued that Boeken's legal indiscretions occurred years ago, had no bearing on the case and would prejudice the jury. The judge, Charles W. McCoy, agreed to bar the evidence. . .
McCoy has scheduled an Aug. 6 hearing on the motion and on an alternative request by the defense for a reduction in the verdict to a maximum of $25 million. The judge is expected to rule from the bench or within a few days of the hearing. . .
Rather than defend Philip Morris' honesty, defense lawyers contended that Boeken had not been hoodwinked or influenced to smoke by anything the industry said or did. In essence, the lawyers argued that Boeken was not telling the truth when he said he had taken the word of their client over that of health authorities.
But in challenging Boeken's candor, they lacked some of the ammunition they had wanted to use, including two felony convictions during the 1970s--one involving stolen property and one for possession of a small amount of heroin.