Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993 TAG: 9301310024
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By FRANK FISHER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BELLEVILLE, ILL. LENGTH: Medium
WHAT NEXT FOR TOBACCO INDUSTRY?
A dying man lost his fight to hold the tobacco industry responsible for smoking's ills, but anti-smoking forces say the war has just begun."I think the emphasis is on breaking the ground and planting the seeds," said Richard Daynard, who runs the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University Law School in Boston. "Reaping the harvest will be up to the next case."
St. Clair County jurors late Friday rejected Charles Kueper's claims that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and the Tobacco Institute conspired to conceal the dangers of smoking and thereby helped cause his lung cancer.
Tobacco attorneys argued Kueper, 51, chose to smoke almost two packs of Winstons a day even though he knew about warning labels on cigarette packages that began appearing in 1966. They also contended that the type of cancer Kueper has is not directly linked to smoking.
"The jury placed the responsibility in the right hands," said Dave Brenton, president of Smokers Rights Alliance and editor of American Smokers Journal in Frankfort, Ky. "We live in a world full of choices. Nobody makes us do anything, thank goodness."
The 10-week trial gained national attention because it was the first of its type since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that warning labels do not protect cigarette makers from lawsuits.
Several jurors said after the verdict that Kueper's admission that he continued smoking for more than two decades even though he knew about the warnings hurt his case.
The jury rejected the suggestion of his attorney that he get as much as $48 million in damages.
Joe Longinotti, an independent consultant watching the trial for the Salomon Bros. investment house, called it a "total, complete, victory" for the tobacco industry. He predicted the value of tobacco stocks would remain stable or rise slightly because people will not be worried about liability lawsuits.
But the battleground already is being prepared for as many as 60 more liability cases. Daynard said the first two would begin in June in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Mississippi case involves a court-declared mentally incompetent man who died of lung cancer in 1986. Attorney Don Barrett said Anderson Smith began smoking in 1941 as a teen-ager but became mentally ill in 1946 and continued smoking despite having the "mind of a child."
"In this case, they can't say he made an informed, adult choice to smoke and that he assumed the risk," Barrett said in a telephone interview.
In the Louisiana case, an attorney is taking Lorillard Tobacco Co. to court over his wife's death from lung cancer, contending precedents in Louisiana law say a company that denies its products are dangerous cannot say a person was negligent in using them.