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R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said yesterday that it settled lawsuits filed by three attorneys general over a 2004 marketing campaign for Kool cigarettes, a former Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. brand.
Reynolds' former publicly traded parent company bought Brown & Wil-liamson in July and merged it with Reynolds, which is based in Winston-Salem.
Reynolds, which admitted no wrongdoing under the settlement, agreed to pay $1.5 million to four groups to use for smoking-prevention programs. It also agreed to certain restrictions on future "Kool Mixx" promotions. Kool is a menthol cigarette.
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Monday's outcome signals the industry's exposure to smoking-related suits has not risen as much as Wall Street had begun to fear, analysts said Tuesday.
But analysts warned tobacco companies will have to win a case or two on the West Coast to restore investor faith after Oregon and California juries hit Philip Morris with damages totaling $131.5 million in two separate cases.
But analyst David Adelman of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter said the outcome "doesn't mean the two West Coast verdicts were aberrations." Indeed, the Memphis jury found Reynolds and Brown & Williamson liable for the death of one of the smokers, but didn't award damages because Tennessee law bars damages in cases where plaintiffs are found to be at least 50% responsible for their injuries. . . Shelby County Circuit Judge D'Army Bailey allowed the jury to view only a handful of internal documents accumulated by Jacksonville, Fla., plaintiffs lawyer Norwood S. "Woody" Wilner. Mr. Wilner's star witness for smoking-related pulmonary diseases, Allan Feingold of Miami, was prevented from testifying about industry conduct. As a result, Dr. Feingold, chief of the department of pulmonary medicine at South Miami Hospital, didn't testify at all.
Jury instructions in the case made it clear that plaintiffs could win damages only if the tobacco companies were more than 50% to blame for the lung cancer in each case.
Analysts said the proximity of the Memphis trial to tobacco- growing country and the requirement for a unanimous verdict favor the defendants.
The tobacco companies conspired to hide facts about smoking and designed cigarettes to enhance addiction, Norwood (Woody) Wilner, the attorney for the families, told the jury in closing arguments today. ``Everything they did was intentional. There were no accidents,'' said Wilner. ``The cigarette companies knew about the risks and concealed and hid the facts.'' . . . The companies are being sued by the families of Bobby Newcomb, who held various jobs including truck driver and dock worker and was 64 when he died in 1998; James Karney, a truck driver who was 71 when he died in 1996; and Florence Bruch, a homemaker who died in 1996 at age 64.
An alternate juror discarded his red ID badge Thursday morning and bolted from the Shelby County Courthouse.
He isn't coming back.
The defection, just before the start of Thursday's morning session, occurred as attorneys for cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris were to resume questioning cancer specialists they had called to the witness stand.
Memphis radiologist Daniel J. Becker and retired pathologist George T. Hensley of Virginia testified last week that Florence Bruch and James Karney suffered from cancers that didn't originate in the lungs.
Dr. Robert Norrell is an expert in the measurement of "common knowledge" - the reservoir of factual information that is widely circulated through a society. Tidbits such as George Washington's being the first president, for example. Or Genesis's place at the beginning of the Old Testament.
Smoking's harmful effects, the defense witness testified, have been part of that common-knowledge canon for centuries, at least since England's King James penned a tract called ``A Counter Blaste to tobacco'' in 1604. . . He's the first in the line of defense witnesses that will take about four more weeks to present, attorneys estimate.