|
B&W gets smoked in court
|
 |
August 9, 1996: 8:02 p.m. ET
Tobacco stocks plunge after Fla. jury awards $750,000 to smoker
From Correspondent Greg Clarkin
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) -- The tobacco industry's courtroom winning streak was extinguished in a Florida courtroom Friday.
In a decision that shocked Wall Street and the tobacco industry, a state jury in Jacksonville awarded 66-year-old Grady Carter $500,000 in damages in his lawsuit against tobacco company B.A.T. Industries' Brown & Williamson subsidiary.
The jury also awarded Carter's wife, Millie, $250,000 in damages.
Carter smoked from 1947 until 1991, when doctors diagnosed him with lung cancer.
He said the company's advertising for Lucky Strikes, the first brand Carter smoked, led him to view smoking as safe.
Before Friday's verdict, tobacco companies had won all previous liability cases against them.
Only once before had a jury found against them, and tobacco companies won that case on appeal.
But in a March interview, Carter's attorney, Norwood Wilner, said cigarette makers are vulnerable.
"This idea that the cigarette companies are somehow invulnerable in court is a public-relations ploy that they've created," Wilner said.
In a statement, Brown & Williamson called Friday's decision "the product of error that is subject to appeal, with a very good possibility the verdict will be reversed."
Other cigarette makers insisted the decision did not set a legal precedent.
Still, tobacco stocks plunged on the news, with trading on the issues halted for a time.
However, analyst Martin Feldman of Smith Barney downplayed the verdict.
Noting that the jury only awarded Carter 50 percent of the $1.5 million minimum in damages that the plaintiff had sought, Feldman said: "He got half of what he asked for. It sets no legal precedent."
Many on Wall Street believed that sooner of later, a sympathetic jury would side with smokers.
The question now is how sympathetic Wall Street will be toward the tobacco industry. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
