West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously disagreed with Ohio County Circuit Judge Recht.
Jump to full article: Charleston (WV) State Journal, 2005-12-08
Author: Juliet A. Terry
Intro: The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals said a massive personal injury lawsuit in West Virginia can proceed as planned.
The nation's largest consolidation of smokers suing cigarette makers -- roughly 1,100 plaintiffs -- can address the need for punitive damages in the first phase of a two-part trial plan.
The tobacco case was supposed to follow what some call the asbestos litigation model: Liability for all defendants is addressed en masse in the first trial phase. That jury will decide what, if any alleged acts the defendant companies are responsible for, and if that jury decides the companies are liable for punitive damages, it will set a punitive damage multiplier. In the second phase of the trial, when plaintiffs take their specific claims to a new jury, any economic damages awarded then would be multiplied by the phase one figure to reach total damages for a plaintiff.
Ohio County Circuit Judge Arthur M. Recht has been overseeing the case, but after a controversial 2003 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, he threw out the West Virginia case's original trial plan. . . .
Recht said that meant a phase one trial could not include punitive damages, but the state Supreme Court disagreed in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Elliott E. "Spike" Maynard.
The court said the State Farm case does not preclude the smokers from proceeding with a bifurcated trial plan, a decision that also revalidates the asbestos litigation model.
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