The state’s highest court has partially overturned a landmark verdict against Lorillard Tobacco Co. that alleged the company designed cigarettes solely to attract younger smokers, addicting a Boston woman who later died of lung cancer.
The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the award of compensatory damages to the woman’s son and her estate, but struck down the award of punitive damages.
“We affirm the judgment only in part,†the court said in a unanimous 82-page opinion written by Justice Ralph Gants.
The court said the award of a total of $35 million in compensatory damages “adequately rests†on the jury’s finding that Lorillard, due to a design or warning defect, committed a breach of its implied warranty of merchantability — essentially, the guarantee that a product is fit for ordinary uses — when it sold the cigarettes.
But it said the award of $81 million in punitive damages may have been marred by inadequate jury instructions on the legal theories of “negligent design and marketing†and “breach of voluntarily undertaken duty.â€
“We vacate the award of punitive damages because it may have been tainted by the errors ... and we remand the case for a new trial on the issue of punitive damages,†the court said.
The high court also vacated a finding by the lower court judge that the tobacco company had violated state consumer protection law. The court ordered that the lower court judge reconsider that issue and determine if any damages should be paid.
Marie Evans’s son, Willie Evans, sued Lorillard, blaming them for introducing his mother to cigarette smoking by giving her free samples of Newports when she was 9 years old and living in the Orchard Park housing development in the 1950s. By the age of 13, she was addicted, a jury found.
Marie Evans smoked while pregnant with her first and only child and also after suffering a heart attack when she was 36. She was still smoking when she died in 2002 of small-cell lung cancer at 54.
A jury had originally awarded $50 million to Marie Evans’s estate and $21 million to her son, but that award was reduced by the judge.
