$43.1 Million Verdict Against R.J. Reynolds for Brake Mechanic's Lung Cancer From Menthol and Asbestos

Louis Summerlin started smoking menthol cigarettes as a young man in the 1950s, before the first federal health warnings appeared on packs in 1966, and he never managed to quit. For about 25 years, from 1959 into the mid-1980s, he also worked as an automobile brake mechanic, grinding and blowing out asbestos-lined brakes. In 2015 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He gave videotaped testimony about his life, and about seven months after the diagnosis he died. He was 73.

His widow Joanna and son Chris sued in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston (No. 1581CV05255), naming both the tobacco companies whose brands he smoked, Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds, and the asbestos companies behind the brake products, among them Hampden Automotive Sales Corporation. The theory was that the two causes fed each other: cigarette smoke and asbestos each cause lung cancer, and together they multiply the risk. The asbestos defendants other than Hampden settled before trial for undisclosed amounts. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg and Michael Shepard of Shepard Law tried the case for the family; Shook Hardy appeared for Philip Morris, Jones Day for Reynolds and Smith Duggan for Hampden.

Jury selection began on September 5, 2018 before Judge Heidi Brieger, and the evidence ran five weeks. The family's case against the cigarette makers rested on Massachusetts' implied warranty of merchantability, arguing that cigarettes engineered to deliver nicotine far above the addiction threshold were unreasonably dangerous, and on fraud, arguing that the industry had concealed its own research on the dangers of smoking while publicly denying them. After four days of deliberations, on October 12, 2018, the jury found that every cigarette Mr. Summerlin smoked was unreasonably dangerous and defectively designed, but that only the Salem and Kool brands made by Reynolds, which he smoked until 1984, were a substantial factor in causing his cancer. It found that Reynolds had committed fraud by misrepresenting its scientific research and withholding what it knew. It cleared Philip Morris and Hampden Automotive.

The jury awarded $13.1 million in compensatory damages against Reynolds: $5.3 million for Mr. Summerlin's pain and suffering, $4.3 million in wrongful death damages and $3.5 million to Joanna Summerlin for loss of consortium. After further findings that Reynolds had been grossly negligent and had acted maliciously, willfully, wantonly and recklessly, it added $30 million in punitive damages, for a total of $43.1 million. The verdict was reported as the largest in New England in 2018 and as the first lung cancer case in the United States tried to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos product companies together.

What happened next is not fully public. We found no reported decision of the Massachusetts Appeals Court or Supreme Judicial Court modifying or reversing the verdict, and Massachusetts adds prejudgment interest at 12 percent to a judgment like this one, but whether Reynolds appealed and settled, or paid the judgment, has not been reported.