Jump to full article: Law.com, 2007-05-10
Author: Matthew Hirsch The Recorder
Intro: After battling for nearly three months of trial, Madelyn Chaber and H. Joseph Escher III came together and shook hands in the San Francisco courtroom where jurors had just returned a $250,000 punitive damage verdict Wednesday morning.
They congratulated each other politely, but the verdict was a disappointment for Chaber, who sued the R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris tobacco companies for fraud and negligence in contributing to Leslie Whiteley's development of lung cancer.
"It needed at least another comma and a few more zeroes," she said in the third-floor hallway of San Francisco Superior Court.
Seven years ago, Chaber won $21.7 million, including $20 million in punitives, for Whiteley and her family. It was one of the first punitive awards in California tobacco litigation.
Soon after the first trial ended, Whiteley died at age 40. . . .
All told, Chaber won about $2.8 million the second time around, including compensatory damages against R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.
"At the end of the day, it's still a punitive damage verdict ... and in relation to zero, it's a lot of money," said Chaber, who's of counsel at the law firm Paul, Hanley & Harley. . . .
After Judge Robert Dondero released the jury, foreman Ed Collar briefly described how the jurors reached a decision on punitive damages.
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