RJ Reynolds Asks Judge to Toss Jury’s $23.6B Award in Smoking Lawsuit

Defendant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., who was slapped with a $23.6 billion verdict in the R.J. Reynolds wrongful death lawsuit in July, moved to set aside that verdict arguing it is “wildly and absurdly excessive.”

Florida residents Cynthia Robinson and her son Michael Johnson Jr. brought the smoking wrongful death lawsuit against the tobacco company in 2008 alleging that tobacco products produced by R.J. Reynolds caused the wrongful death of her spouse who smoked 1-3 packs of cigarettes a day from the age of 13 until 36 when he died. The Robinson’s were originally part of the Engle class action lawsuit whose $145 billion verdict was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court. In July, a jury awarded the Robinsons $17 million in compensatory damages, as well as $23 billion in punitive damages.

In that same month, R.J. Reynolds filed a motion to set aside the verdict or for a verdict in their favor arguing the damages amount to “economical castigation.” “The facts of this case do not remotely justify such multi-million-dollar compensatory awards,” argues R.J. Reynolds, “Mrs. Robinson was married to Mr. Johnson for only six years, was unfamiliar with many of the most basic facts of his life, separated from him soon after he was diagnosed with cancer, and met her next husband within a month or two after his death. Moreover, Michael Johnson never lived primarily with his father, remembers visits with him over the course of only about three years, and has not suffered lingering effects from his death.”

“The verdicts in this case are so obviously excessive that the only possible explanation is passion and prejudice,” R.J. Reynolds wrote. “Moreover, this passion did not just develop by accident, but was the product of various improper arguments pressed by plaintiff’s counsel.” The company claims in its motion that the jury was inflamed “from opening statement to closing arguments” by the plaintiff’s attorney’s “improper statements seeking to punish Reynolds for the deaths of potentially ‘billions’ of smokers; comparing Reynolds to murderers and dealers of illegal drugs; questioning Reynolds’ patriotism; disparaging Reynolds for defending the lawsuit at all; and throwing out references to outrageous sums of money having no connection to the evidence in this case.”

“These improper arguments are the only conceivable explanation for the jury’s off-the-charts punitive verdict,” concludes R.J. Reynolds.

R.J. Reynolds also points out that the $23 billion verdict exceeds the largest punitive damages every upheld, including in the Exxon-Valdez oil spill case and in the Engle class action that preceded this smoking wrongful death lawsuit. “Reasonable minds may differ about the maximum permissible punitive award,” writes the company in its filing, “but this one exceeds any possible upper limit by at least several hundred times over.” R.J. Reynolds also claimed that the verdict is three times the net value of the company in its filing, arguing that allowing the verdict to proceed would amount to “economic castigation.”

Robinson is represented by Willie E. Gary, Tricia P. Hoffler, Donald N. Watson and Jean A. Laws-Scott of Gary Williams Finney Lewis Watson & Sperando PL and attorneys Howard M. Acosta and Christopher Chestnut.

R.J. Reynolds is represented by Randal Baringer, Jonathan Engram and Geoffrey Beach of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP.

The R.J. Reynolds Wrongful Death Lawsuit is Cynthia Robinson v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., et al., Case No. 2008 CA 000098, in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit in and for Escambia County, Florida.