Jump to full article: Lawyers USA , 2009-08-20
Author: Correy E. Stephenson Staff writer
Intro: In the latest individual tobacco case to make it to trial in Florida, a six-person jury in Ft. Lauderdale awarded a 92-year-old man $5.3 million for his wife’s death from smoking.
The case was the eighth Engle case to make it to trial, and the sixth victory for the plaintiffs.
Shirley Barbanell died as a result of a smoking about two packs a day for more than 40 years, said her husband’s attorney, Steven J. Hammer, a partner at the Schlesinger Law Firm in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
The verdict – which does not include punitive damages – will be apportioned for fault. Jurors awarded 63.5 percent of the fault to Barbanell and 36.5 percent to Philip Morris, reducing the verdict to just under $2 million.
Shirley’s husband, Leon, turned 92 on the day he testified at trial about his wife. He told jurors he still talks to her every night since her death in 1996.
He also testified that he and Shirley watched in 1994 as tobacco executives testified before Congress, swearing that their product wasn’t addictive. Shirley had already been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by that point and turned to Leon and told him the executives were lying.
She added, “If anything happens to me, you have to sue them for what they did to me,” Hammer said. . . .
While Hammer acknowledged that his client’s wife bore some responsibility by continuing to smoke, he said the biggest obstacle at trial was presenting to the jury how differently smoking was treated during the majority of Shirley’s life as compared to today.
“Part of the difficulty with [the Engle cases] is that most people have been exposed to all the bad that tobacco does to the human body and are so removed from the time when everyone smoked,” he explained. “It’s difficult for a younger person to grasp that we live in a different world today and they think smokers have a larger share of the fault.”
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