R.J. Reynolds Smoked by $20M Verdict in Engle Wrongful Death Lawsuit

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On Monday, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was hit with a $20 million verdict after a Florida jury determined the cigarette maker was responsible for the death of a lifelong smoker.

Plaintiff Gwendolyn Odom filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her mother, Juanita Thurston. Following a three-week trial, jurors awarded Odom $6 million in compensatory damages, though the amount Odom will actually receive will be reduced to $4.5 million because the jurors found Thurston to be 25 percent at fault for her smoking-related illness. Additionally, Odom was awarded $14 million in punitive damages.

Even though the jurors found Thurston to be partially responsible for causing her illness, they found R.J. Reynolds had concealed the dangers of smoking.

Odom’s smoker injury lawsuit was originally part of the Engle v. Liggett Group Inc. class action lawsuit. The Engle Class, which was initially certified by the Florida Supreme Court, included all Florida citizens and residents, as well as their survivors, who have suffered, currently suffered, or who have died from medical conditions related their addiction to nicotine cigarettes.

In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court decertified the Engle class action lawsuit and overturned the historic $145 billion verdict after determining that it was not feasible to determine causation and damages on a class-wide basis. However, the Florida Supreme Court expressly granted Class Members the right to bring individual lawsuits against the Engle defendants for smoking-related injuries and punitive damages.

Odom subsequently filed her wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her mother in 2008. According to her tobacco injury lawsuit, Thurston died of lung cancer in 1993 when she was 58 years old. She allegedly smoked cigarettes, including brands manufactured by R.J. Reynolds, for years before her death. Odom alleged that nicotine in cigarettes is addictive and that the defendants marketed and sold cigarettes that were defective and unreasonably dangerous.

“Defendants concealed or omitted material information not otherwise known or available, knowing that the material was false or misleading or failed to disclose a material fact concerning the health effects or addictive nature of smoking cigarettes or both,” Odom alleged in her cigarette injury lawsuit.

The verdict comes on the heels of a recent U.S. Supreme Court denial of certiorari petitions from tobacco companies R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Phillip Morris USA, who had urged the court to take up their appeal of the Engle decision. The tobacco companies argued that allowing individual plaintiffs to rely on the findings from the Engle class action lawsuit violated their due process rights. More than 700,000 Class Members from the Engle class action lawsuit have filed individual lawsuits using the Engle jury’s findings of liability.

In January, a Florida appeals court ruled that the state high court’s decision to overturn Engle did not nullify opt-out notices filed by former Class Members, and that the statute of limitations had passed for their wrongful death claims against the tobacco companies.

The Smoker Injury Wrongful Death Lawsuit is Gwenolyn E. Odom, Personal Representative of the Estate of Juanita Thurston v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Case No. 2008CA038863, in the Circuit Court of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit for Palm Beach County, Florida.