Personal Injury Law

14 Year Old Tobacco Lawsuit Settled in Florida

By Eddie Farah

Thousands of Florida smokers or their surviving family members will be eligible to share in a $600 million judgment against tobacco manufacturers ending more than a dozen years of litigation.   

A $145 billion damage award was originally created following litigation by Miami Beach pediatrician Howard Engle who died from emphysema. But the award was thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006.

Tobacco companies instead set up a fund to be divided among Florida smokers who became ill before November 21, 1996.

The distribution of that fund was up in the air until late Friday when a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge ordered the money distributed. Now smokers and their families have until June 16 to register for the Engle Trust Fund.  Smokers must prove that their diseases must come from smoking and they were diagnosed before November 21, 1996. Illnesses include cancer, emphysema and heart diseases.

The fund is expected to be divided equally among 10 to 50,000 individuals who've filed cases across the state regardless of the severity of their illness.

The husband and wife team who brought the original action, Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt,  have been awarded $218 million from the original tobacco trust fund of $800 million.

When the original award was overturned, the Supreme Court let stand the jury's findings that the tobacco companies knowingly sold a dangerous and defective product; that cigarettes are unreasonably dangerous; that cigarettes cause numerous damages; that nicotine is addictive and that Big Tobacco acted negligently.

Named in the original action were Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard Tobacco and Liggett Group. #

Full post as published by Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyer on April 18, 2008 (boomark / email).