Word: verdicts
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Even in this age of runaway jury verdicts, the punitive-damage awards that rang out in a hushed Miami courtroom last Friday were impressive. Against Philip Morris--$73.96 billion; R.J. Reynolds--$36.28 billion; Brown & Williamson--$17.59 billion; Lorillard--$16.25 million; Vector Group (owner of Liggett)--$790 million. By the time Circuit Court Judge Robert Kaye reached the bottom of the verdict sheet, the total had climbed to $144.8 billion. "A lot of zeros," the judge observed dryly...
...Florida suit had made history even before it hit the damages phase. It was the first time a class action against Big Tobacco had ever gone to trial. The cigarette companies have already lost some suits by individual smokers--a $26.5 million award in California from a February 1999 verdict, $33 million in Oregon a month later--but those can be seen as just the cost of doing business...
...child of Greek immigrants, put himself through law school working in his family's tavern. Most started out small. Reaud began by representing workers in the East Texas petrochemical industry who had smashed their fingers and toes at work. In Levin's first case, he won a $50,000 verdict against an insurance company for a woman whose house had burned down...
...They also got corporations to take notice--and to change their conduct. The Ford Pinto, alleged to be prone to erupt in flames after rear-end collisions, was taken off the market. Drugs with severe side effects, such as "phen-fen," were yanked from pharmacy shelves. A $1.8 million verdict in 1980 on behalf of a four-year-old girl who had been badly burned in 1970 persuaded a manufacturer to stop making flammable pajamas--and helped spur more rigorous federal regulations on children's sleepwear...
...represent insurance companies and HMOs. He came to tell them it was in their clients' interest to settle. "One of these days, one of the industry's lawyers in court someplace like Jefferson County, Miss., is going to call headquarters and say, 'This jury just returned a $1 billion verdict,'" Scruggs said. "Just think what that will do to the company's stock...