Jump to full article: Bloomberg News, 2001-03-05
Author: William McQuillen
Intro: A Texas jury will resume deliberating tomorrow morning in a lawsuit that seeks to hold Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. responsible for a longtime smoker's death. The jury began deliberations late this afternoon before recessing for the evening.
During closing arguments in the first individual smoker's suit against cigarette makers to go to trial in Texas, a lawyer for the deceased smoker's relatives said tobacco companies ``treated human life as just the price of doing business.''
``They knew that cigarettes caused lung cancer, they knew the danger of addiction,'' attorney Denman Heard told jurors in the Beaumont, Texas, courtoom. ``Every time they had a chance to share the truth with the American people, they lied.''
Brown & Williamson lawyers said Wiley Grinnell chose to smoke despite knowing that cigarettes were addictive and could cause lung cancer.
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