Florida Widow Wins $30 Million Against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco

June 3, 2009

  • June 3, 2009 at 3:15 am
    Dread says:
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    This guy was 81 years old when he died. He obviously lived a long, productive life and probably would have died of something else if not lung cancer. To award this kind of money to his estate is like a lottery, not justice. The surviors do not deserve to be unjustly enriched over an 81 year old man. If he started smoking 20 years BEFORE warnings were required, he must have been puffing for a hell of a long time. Apparently, he didn’t bother to quit even after the warnings appeared.

  • June 3, 2009 at 3:45 am
    DD72 says:
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    While the guy died at 81, no telling what kinds of medical expenses he incurred during his life due to the cigs and what debts he left behind due to it. And, yes he may have smoked long after the warnings but by then was already addicted. On the other hand, I don’t see how anyone could rack up that much debt even medically, and he could have gotten help to quit.

  • June 3, 2009 at 3:45 am
    bob says:
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    however, I take great delight in seeing the tobacco company being punished. too bad the money goes to reward somebody for selfinflicted death. tobacco is a product that kills hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens every year, and continues on virtually unchecked. it is a crime.

  • June 3, 2009 at 4:49 am
    Curious says:
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    Has anyone ever sued a spirits manufacturer after a family member’s slow death from alcoholism/cirrhosis? Alcoholics are at least as addicted to alcohol as smokers are to nicotine. Neither product is essential to live; both products are ingested by choice – there is assistance available to help people quit (unlike food addiction – you can’t just give up eating). About 40 years ago some rats got sick from a sugar substitute (cyclamates) and it came right off the market. I guess the makers of cyclamates didn’t have deep enough pockets to keep their product on the market.

  • June 4, 2009 at 7:34 am
    wudchuck says:
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    i agree. i don’t see any warning lable on those bottles! here’s the other thing, most of you probably don’t know is that the original recipe for cigarettes was held in a vault by the government. they knew many years ago the value of this recipe and what it can do. so the class action lawsuit should include the gov’t for hiding this before they required labeling. i would then turn around sue the gov’t for non-labeling the spirits.

    this guy was 81…what is the average age of living nowadays? he’s lived a long time, who knows, smoking may have caused him to live a longer life. but most folks will probably not agree. maybe smoking was his way of calming down w/o taking those pills that doctors seem to prescribe to make druggers money. i put this back to the those think that kids have ad. i was able to fool the school system and doctors, i gave my son a flintstone vitamin pill instead of what they wanted me to. he turned out fine! problem, is that many teachers don’t want to take the extra time with students who want to learn. my son was disturbing for the wrong reason, he would raise his hand to get an oppportunity to answer the teacher’s question but never got called upon. he had a speech problem due to a hearing problem with a flap growing in the ear. we had to have surgery to get it removed. so they took him out of english class to go to speech therapy but left him in the class to teach him spanish! what good is that? in 1st grade, we need to prioritize english. leave these secondary languages to jr high and high school.

    so where does that leave us as a society? do we allow the doctors and drug producers control our lives? do we have to allow us as an individual not allow ourselves to make a decision and we take responsibility for it? these frivilous lawsuits need to go by the wayside.

  • June 4, 2009 at 10:19 am
    caldudenomore says:
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    The government held the recipe in a vault?! Was it kept next to the Colonel’s secret KFC blend, Hitler’s brain, the Area 51 dudes and the Lost Ark? Jim Morrison and Bruce Lee do the tours, Elvis is the curator…..

  • June 4, 2009 at 11:11 am
    DJones says:
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    Once smokers quit or die off, who’s going to be in the hotseat next for families to sue?

    Why hasn’t the govt paid the tobacco farmers not to grow it? Because smokers are good for the economy.

    I smoke so my daughter can sue the tobacco industry after I die. I want to set her up for life. Nothing like several million dollars to ease her sadness.

    The one thing we won’t hear about is, when the judge lowers the amount of the lottery winnings for this widow.

  • June 4, 2009 at 11:16 am
    Un4givn2 says:
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    People knew that tobacco is bad for you long before any warning labels were required. This is no different than to sue McDonalds for selling fattening food. It’s just a way for yet another crooked scumbag lawyer to make millions off of society – we all pay for it one way or another. I hope Matt Shultz eventually ends up in prison with Scruggs, where he belongs.

  • June 4, 2009 at 12:17 pm
    SWFL Agent says:
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    Is there a recipe for cigarettes? I thought it was rolled/ground tobacco in paper. Maybe the Gov’t is still incubating the original tobacco seed so the vile weed will never become extinct? And a clone of that seed has also been placed on the moon for safe keeping.

  • June 4, 2009 at 2:32 am
    Danno says:
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    The liquor industry has never been proved to have increased the addictivity of their product. The cigarette companies did deliberately increase the addictive properties of their product and then they hid the research/proof. A deliberate act of deception.



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