US: A court in the United States has ordered Reynolds Tobacco
Co., the country's second largest cigarette maker, to pay record punitive
damages of $23.6 billion to the widow of a cigarette-smoking cancer victim.
Michael Johnson Sr. smoked the
company’s Kool brand menthol cigarettes for over 20 years before dying of lung
cancer in 1996 at the age of 36.
His widow, Cynthia Robinson, took
action against Reynolds in 2008, seeking compensation for her husband's death.
She argued the conspired to conceal the health hazards associated with its
menthol cigarettes.
On Friday, the jury in northwestern
Florida first awarded $17 million in compensatory damages and then emerged at
10 p.m. with a $23.6 billion punitive judgment. “When they first read the
verdict, I know I heard ‘million,’ and I got so excited,” Robinson said in a
phone interview with the New York Times on Saturday. “Then the attorney
informed me that was a ‘B’ — billion. It was just unbelievable.”
In a statement on Saturday, a
Reynolds official said the court's verdict was unfair and unreasonable.
“The damages awarded in this case
are grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law,”
said J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R. J.
Reynolds.
“This verdict goes far beyond the
realm of reasonableness and fairness and is completely inconsistent with the
evidence presented.
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