Jury ruled against family of smoker who died of cancer
Jump to full article: Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, 2002-11-20
Author: Jimmie E. Gates
Intro: The state Supreme Court was asked Tuesday to overturn a 2000 DeSoto County Circuit Court jury decision favoring a tobacco company in a wrongful death lawsuit filed 13 years ago by the family of a deceased smoker.
The jury denied a $102 million lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds tobacco company by the widow of Southaven resident Joseph Lee Nunnally, who died in 1989 of lung cancer. He started smoking when he was 8 years old.
Kay Nunnally's attorney, Charles Merkel of Clarksdale, argued Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the high court that the verdict should be reversed because then-Circuit Judge George Carlson erred in not allowing the plaintiff to present evidence of negligence by the tobacco company. Also, Merkle said the jury shouldn't have received an instruction that they had to find the product to be both defective and unreasonably dangerous.
"Are you asking us to reverse our colleague?" Justice Chuck McRae asked Merkle, referring to Carlson who is now a state Supreme Court justice.
Merkle replied, "We asked the court to find that he erred in his premise." . .
Merkle said the two-prong test of proving the product to be defective and unreasonably dangerous was too much to overcome in the trial.
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