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• Ex-smoker from Seminole loses tobacco lawsuit 

Jurors who deliberated more than 12 hours over three days decided that Philip Morris wasn't liable for Tune's health problems or for a conspiracy to hide the risks of smoking from the public.

The tobacco case was the first of its kind to reach trial in Pinellas and included two weeks of testimony.

"That's the way it goes," Tune, 76, of Seminole said with the help of an electronic device. "The only thing I can say is that it was a lot of tobacco money against no money."

Philip Morris, the retired New Jersey police captain said, simply outspent him at trial. . .

"While it's possible to find fault with the behavior of tobacco companies for their past conduct, it's pretty hard to stand in front of a jury and tell them, 'I couldn't quit,' " said Philip Morris attorney Mathias Lydon, an ex-smoker who quit in 1982.

The six-person jury, which included two smokers and one ex-smoker, decided as a group not to discuss its verdict with reporters.

Beyond personal choice, the company said tracing Tune's cancer to cigarettes is impossible given his other risk factor.

The company said Tune drank all of his adult life. He also briefly worked in the chemical industry and lived until 1990 in New Jersey, an industrial state whose population is at a higher risk for cancer, Philip Morris said.

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• Pinellas court to weigh blame for smoker's ills 

Beginning in the early 1940s, Robert M. Tune smoked a pack and a half a day for most of his adult life. . .

He kept lighting his Marlboros until doctors removed his cancerous voice box to save his life. Within a few years, part of a lung followed.

Tune, 76, of Seminole will spend the next month in a St. Petersburg courtroom as his lawyers try to convince a jury that Philip Morris Inc., the company that manufactured his beloved Marlboros, should pay him for his suffering.

In the first tobacco liability case to come to trial in Pinellas, the retired New Jersey police captain seeks compensatory damages in excess of $100,000 for medical bills and unspecified punitive damages from the nation's largest cigarette maker.

"Philip Morris should accept some of the responsibility" for Tune's cancer, said Tune's lead attorney, Howard Acosta. "Mr. Tune accepts responsibility for his smoking. But do you expect the company to know more about its product than the average customer?"

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