On September 1st, the Massachusetts Superior Court found that Lorillard Tobacco Co., the manufacturer of Newport cigarettes, violated consumer protection laws and was negligent and grossly negligent. The estate of Marie Evans and her son said in their complaint that she started smoking as a minor after Lorillard distributed free cigarettes at her public housing complex.
A violation of G.L. c.93A normally carries with it double or triple damages and awards attorney's fees to Ms. Evans' estate and her son. The Court determined that given the size of the punitive damages award - $81 million dollars - it is not awarding multiple damages but that the attorney is entitled to attorney's fees for what the attorney reports was 10 years of litigation.
The complaint alleges that Lorillard, when Ms. Evans was a child, handed out free cigarettes at her apartment complex. The Court found that Lorillard (a) breached their duty to safely market and properly warn consumers about the safety of its cigarettes, (b) that the cigarettes were unreasonably dangerous, and (c) that in so doing, Lorillard violated its duty to accurately report to the public its research and knowledge about the safety (or lack thereof) of its cigarettes. The court's
Findings of Fact and Rulings of Law can be read at Tobacco-on-Trial. The web site is anti-tobacco (no surprise there) but the document appears to be an accurate and complete reproduction of the Court's decision.
In 1960 when Lorillard handing out free cigarettes in a Roxbury housing project, the public had no idea how dangerous cigarettes could be. The public had no idea that Lorillard had also specifically targeted for "youthful" and "immature" smokers, that they had based their business on a high school demographic and that they knew by 1950 that cigarette smoking was linked to cancer even as they marketed cigarettes to teens as "harmless". As the public began to learn that scientists had conclusively linked cigarettes to cancer, Lorillard voluntarily ran advertisements claiming that there was still a scientific debate on the issue and promised that Lorillard would look into it. The advertising campaign was designed to create doubt about the health issue of smoking without Lorillard openly denying that there was a problem and while Lollilard knew credible and substantive scientific evidence to the contrary.
As a result, Ms. Evans was hooked onto Newport cigarettes, smoked that brand all of her life, and died of small cell lung cancer caused by her cigarette smoking. The Court found that Lorillard voluntarily stepped up to the plate, promised to tell the truth about cancer and cigarettes, and promptly lied, and as a result Ms. Evans' son and her estate are entitled to seek recovery what it cost them to obtain the verdict.
