St. Louis jurors deciding $700 million case against tobacco company
STLtoday.com
ST. LOUIS • A St. Louis jury began deliberating Monday whether Missouri smokers deserve at least $700 million from tobacco giant Philip Morris for allegedly deceiving them into believing light cigarettes were safer than regular cigarettes when they weren’t.
On Monday, jurors heard closing arguments in the class action lawsuit in Circuit Court Judge Michael David’s courtroom. The trial started at the end of last month and was expected to last well into November. The trial is coming to an end in its fifth week partly because the defense put on three witnesses, fewer than what had been planned for.
About 700 million packs of Marlboro Light cigarettes were sold in Missouri from early 1995 until the end of 2002, the period the suit covers. Actual damage estimates range from $696 million to $911 million, which averages to just over a dollar per pack of cigarettes sold. That means a pack-a-day smoker would be awarded about $365 for every year of Marlboro lights smoked.
“This case is about the best-selling cigarette in Missouri that didn’t deliver on its promise,” plaintiff’s attorney Stephen Swedlow said in closing arguments. He said a “reasonable consumer” would expect that it was important to buy the light cigarettes based on its labeling promising lower tar and nicotine.
But the cigarettes were made with the same tobacco as regular cigarettes, and smokers might compensate for the lower nicotine by inhaling more deeply, the plaintiffs argued. People don’t smoke like the machines used by Philip Morris to measure nicotine content, he said.
“Everyone in Missouri who buys a product deserves not to be lied to,” he said.
Philip Morris attorneys countered that information about smokers compensating for lower nicotine levels was known for years, and that the health community believed that smoking light cigarettes produced lower rates of lung cancer and recommended lower-tar cigarettes to people if they had to smoke.
The company took the label of “lower tar and nicotine” off packages in 2003 and in 2010 stopped using the term “lights.”
“These plaintiffs didn’t sue to change the packaging,” argued Beth Wilkinson, attorney for Philip Morris. “They sued to get money.”
She said that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove how many people in the class bought the cigarettes because they thought they were safer, who actually got lower tar and nicotine by smoking them, and who may still be smoking them. Swedlow said that he didn’t have to prove such things.
Philip Morris attorney George Lombardi ridiculed the methods the plaintiff used to survey members of the class and calculate estimated damages. The survey involved 293 participants who were promised $10 to $20 in compensation and a chance at a free iPad. They were also told the survey would take ten minutes to complete over the internet. Lombardi claimed experts then analyzed the data and tweaked numbers to get the results they wanted.
“This is supposed to be the entire basis for the ascertainable loss in this case,” Lombardi said.
If the jury finds in favor of the plaintiffs, punitive damages will be determined in a second phase of the trial.
Several class representatives were originally part of the suit, but the last remaining one is Deborah Larsen, 60, of Jefferson County.
She smoked about a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights a day from 1979 until 2002, when she quit. Philip Morris attorneys say she was sought out by the plaintiff’s attorneys to represent the class.
This is the second large tobacco trial in St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael David’s courtroom this year.
In April, big tobacco companies prevailed in a sweep of verdicts against hospitals seeking to recoup the costs of treating smokers’ diseases.
That trial started in January and took 2 ½ months to present.
