$13.8 Million Verdict Against R.J. Reynolds for Tampa Smoker's Widow in Engle Tobacco Case

On April 20, 2017, a Hillsborough County jury in Tampa found that Johnny Lima's addiction to cigarettes had caused him serious smoking-related disease, and it held R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company responsible. The jurors awarded his widow, Mary Lima, $3 million in compensatory damages, put 60 percent of the fault on Reynolds and 40 percent on Lima himself, and cleared Philip Morris USA entirely. The next day they added $12 million in punitive damages against Reynolds. After the fault split, the compensatory award came to $1.8 million, and the punitive award stood in full, for $13.8 million.

Lima was a grocer and restaurateur in the Tampa area. He began smoking in the 1940s and, by the account at trial, smoked up to two packs a day for more than 45 years. He died in 1993 at age 60. His widow sued the tobacco companies as personal representative of his estate, claiming that nicotine addiction led to a series of smoking-related diseases, among them coronary artery disease, emphysema and lung cancer.

The case was one of the thousands of Engle-progeny suits in Florida. Those cases trace back to the Florida Supreme Court's 2006 decision decertifying the Engle class action, which let individual smokers keep certain findings from the original trial: that cigarettes were addictive and dangerous, and that the industry conspired for decades to hide the risks. Each plaintiff still has to prove that the smoker was addicted and that addiction led to a specific smoking-related disease.

The first phase of trial ran ten days and centered on those questions. Scott Schlesinger of Schlesinger Law Offices argued for Mary Lima, telling the jury that treating doctors and experts agreed pulmonary fibrosis, emphysema and lung cancer combined to kill her husband. The defense said Lima more likely died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs it contended was unrelated to smoking, and Philip Morris argued that no one had shown Lima regularly smoked its brands. After nearly two days of deliberation, the jury found that his addiction caused at least one of the diseases, but that none of them caused his death. It spared Philip Morris and found for Mary Lima against Reynolds on her negligence, strict liability and intentional tort claims, which included Reynolds' part in the industry conspiracy.

The punitive phase began the following day and ended with the $12 million award against Reynolds.

Reynolds appealed to Florida's Second District Court of Appeal. On January 2, 2019, the court affirmed in a one-line per curiam order, without an opinion. The court's published record lists C. Steven Yerrid of The Yerrid Law Firm, Tampa, as counsel for the appellee estate, alongside Scott Schlesinger, Steven Hammer, Jonathan Gdanski and Brittany Chambers of Schlesinger Law Offices, and Thomas Seider, Celene Humphries and Maegen Luka of Brannock & Humphries.