$21 Million Verdict Against Philip Morris for Smoker Who Started at Age 13
Won by Bernheim Kelley, LLC.
A Boston jury awarded $21 million to the widow of a Lynn man who died of lung cancer after taking up smoking at 13, when a salesman handed him a free pack of Marlboros, with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirming the verdict in full in 2021.
What happened
Fred Laramie was 13 years old in 1970 when a salesman handed him a free pack of Marlboro cigarettes near a store in Lynn, Massachusetts. He became a pack-a-day smoker, could not quit despite trying, and smoked for the rest of his life.
Laramie died of lung cancer in December 2016 at 59. His widow, Pamela Laramie, filed suit against Philip Morris USA in Suffolk Superior Court, arguing that the company had knowingly engineered its cigarettes to create and sustain addiction while deliberately targeting young people in densely populated neighborhoods.
Walter Kelley of Bernheim Dolinsky Kelley tried the case over eleven days. The plaintiff's team argued that Philip Morris had designed its cigarettes to maximize nicotine delivery despite long-standing internal knowledge of the health risks, and that its free-sample campaigns were a calculated strategy to hook minors before they could make informed choices about tobacco use.
The jury found Philip Morris liable on a defective-design theory and, on August 14, 2019, returned a verdict of $21 million: $11 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages. The jury cleared the company on a separate claim of negligent distribution to a minor but concluded the broader conduct justified punishment.
Philip Morris appealed, contending in part that the 1998 master tobacco settlement agreement barred individual wrongful-death suits. On September 15, 2021, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected that argument. Justice Dalila Wendlandt, writing for the court, held that the settlement resolved state-level claims and did not extinguish individual civil actions. The $21 million award was affirmed without reduction. The ruling opened a pathway for dozens of similar tobacco cases then pending in Massachusetts courts.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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