Siding with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the Florida Supreme Court last week rejected a $5 million punitive-damages award in a lawsuit involving the death of a smoker in 2007.
It was one of thousands of cases filed against the tobacco industry after a 2006 Supreme Court ruling that established critical findings about issues such as the dangers of smoking and misrepresentation by cigarette makers.
An Orange County jury awarded almost $2 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages to Mary Sheffield as the representative of her husband’s estate after he died of lung cancer.
But R.J. Reynolds argued that a circuit judge improperly applied a pre-1999 version of a state punitive damages law to the case, and a panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal agreed two years ago.That led Sheffield to go to the Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court decision in a 6-1 ruling.