Jump to full article: (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) Sun-Sentinel, 2001-04-08
Author: TERRI SOMERS / Staff Writer
Intro: Nonsmoking flight attendants who fear that Marie Fontana's courtroom defeat last week dooms their cases should take heart. Most of them still have a good chance against the tobacco industry, and the Boca Raton woman's defeat is not as significant as a victory would have been, experts say.
A jury award in favor of a plaintiff could still be a "catastrophe for the tobacco companies," said Joseph Daly, a professor at Hamline University Law School in Minnesota who follows tobacco litigation. "It would set up the fear factor in the tobacco companies ... they'd know they've got all these other cases out there and maybe they'd better find a way to get rid of them." . .
Upon the loss of their flight attendant cases, Fontana's lawyers quickly pointed out just how unique her case was. She is the only plaintiff to suffer from a lung disease called sarcoidosis. Doctors and scientists are stymied as to what causes this progressive disease.
And lawyers for Philip Morris, the country's largest tobacco company, agreed. In fact they capitalized on the unknown nature of the disease when presenting their defense to the jury in the three-week trial. . .
But it appears that the case next up in the mass of litigation is that of a nonsmoking flight attendant who developed lung cancer, said Miles McGrane, a member of the legal team assembled to represent the flight attendants. . .
Victory in flight attendant cases might be the incentive for a whirlwind of similar litigation to be filed by bartenders, waitresses and a whole slew of people who worked in areas where they were involuntarily exposed to secondhand smoke, said Woody Wilner
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