Jump to full article: Memphis (TN) Commercial Appeal, 2000-07-11
Author: William C. Bayne / The Commercial Appeal
Intro: In an effort to shorten the trial, lawyers for both sides agreed to a number of stipulations that will be presented as facts for the jury to consider.
The stipulations include: warnings on cigarette packages since 1966; a statement that nicotine is naturally occurring; that Nunnally's parents smoked; that R. J. Reynolds legally sold cigarettes in Mississippi, and that no alternative cigarette design would have reduced the risk to Joe Nunnally's health as much as quitting smoking would have.
In testimony Monday, Dr. Thomas L. Bennett, a forensic pathologist and former Mississippi medical examiner, testified the large tumor was more likely a sarcoma than a carcinoma.
Sarcomas are not thought to be related to smoking . . .
Bennett, who has testified in two previous tobacco cases and served as a consultant in two more, said he receives $150 an hour for reviewing documents and $250 an hour for his testimony.
Dr. George Seiden, a Shreveport, La., psychiatrist, said he had performed a "psychological autopsy" on Joe Nunnally by reading depositions given by family members, friends and Nunnally's associates, including his fifth-grade teacher.
Seiden said the Nunnally case was the 10th or 12th tobacco case he's testified in, always for tobacco companies.
He said he receives $250 an hour to review documents and $350 an hour for his testimony. . . He discounted nicotine as an addictive drug, contending that nicotine leaves the body after 10 hours without smoking.
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Quotes from this article:
There's a lot of evidence from the fifth grade forward that [Nunnally] was aware of the dangers [of smoking].
RJR witness Dr. George Seiden, a Shreveport, La., psychiatrist, who said he had performed a "psychological autopsy" on Joe Nunnally. Bayne, W., <I>Tobacco Trial May Go To Jury Today</I>
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