Philip Morris, Inc. v. French

After several named tobacco companies agreed to pay a class of non-smoking flight attendants, Lynn French, sought damages via the lawsuit's "settlement agreement" for chronic bronchitis and sinusitis, which she claimed to have developed as a result of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke during her employment with Trans World Airlines from May 1967 through the time of the lawsuit. A jury awarded French $5.5 million, and the tobacco companies challenged their liability for causing the plaintiff's injuries, as well as the process by which the jury calculated the damages owed to French. The District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District, affirmed the liability of the defendant tobacco companies but remanded the case for new damage calculations that would consider each company independently liable for French's injuries.

Philip Morris, Inc., et al. v. French, 897 So.2d 480, District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District (2004).

  • United States
  • Dec 22, 2004
  • District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District

Parties

Plaintiff Lynn French

Defendant

  • Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation
  • Lorillard Tobacco Company
  • Philip Morris USA, Incorporated
  • R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company

Legislation Cited

Related Documents

Type of Litigation

Tobacco Control Topics

Substantive Issues

Type of Tobacco Product

None

"Although we agree with the trial court that there was no conceivable way to identify every brand of cigarette smoked on the TWA flights on which French served (or the quantity of each brand smoked), we disagree with the court's market share apportionment of damages. Florida has adopted the "Indivisible Injury Rule" to be applied when a jury cannot apportion injury. See Gross v. Lyons, 763 So.2d 276, 280 (Fla.2000). This rule provides: When the tortious conduct of more than one defendant contributes to one indivisible injury, the entire amount of damage resulting from all contributing causes is the total amount "of damages recoverable by the plaintiff[.]" Gross, v. Lyons, 763 So.2d at 280 (quoting Piner v. Sup. Ct., 192 Ariz. 182, 188, 962 P.2d 909, 915 (1998)).In this case the trial court found, and we agree, that there was no way to determine which and/or how much of the defendants' products contributed to French's injury. Thus, under the indivisible injury rule we find the defendants jointly and severally liable for all of French's damages."
"Prior to trial, the defendants filed a motion in limine seeking to preclude Dr. Persky from testifying in this case. The motion was entertained at a non-evidentiary hearing, and denied. At trial, the defendants failed to renew their motion and Dr. Persky was permitted to opine that second hand smoke was a contributing cause of French's chronic sinusitis. Moreover, the defendants did not challenge the competence of Dr. Persky's testimony at the close of all the evidence. Thus, the defendants failed to preserve, and, in fact, waived this issue for appellate review."
"Clearly, the objective of the settlement was to eliminate issues on both sides, thereby streamlining the litigation, and putting Stage I of the flight attendants' suits to rest. The defendants' position that each individual plaintiff, over 3,000 at the time of French's trial, is required to prove and re-prove breach of duty and all other elements of their tort claims (except for general causation) defies logic. The assumption that plaintiffs would agree to end six years of litigation, including a trial that had lasted nearly four months, in favor of relitigating each common liability issue (i.e. breach of duty, duty to warn, etc.) a thousand times over is an absurd result that we will not adopt. Accordingly, we affirm the findings of the trial court on this issue and hold, as the trial court did, that the intent of the parties to the settlement agreement was to focus on the individual retained claims and determine whether a "plaintiff's disease was actually caused by exposure to second-hand smoke, and if so, what damages were sustained.""