Florida jury awards $23.6 billion to widow in smoking lawsuit

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CNN:

(CNN) -- A Florida jury awarded a widow $23.6 billion in punitive damages in her lawsuit against tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, her lawyer said.

Cynthia Robinson claimed that smoking killed her husband, Michael Johnson, in 1996. She argued R.J. Reynolds was negligent in not informing him that nicotine is addictive and smoking can cause lung cancer. Johnson started smoking when he was 13 and died of lung cancer when he was 36.

The jury award Friday evening is "courageous," said Robinson's lawyer, Christopher Chestnut.

"If anyone saw the documents that this jury saw, I believe that person would have awarded a similar or greater verdict amount," he said.

The Escambia County trial took four weeks and the jury deliberated for 15 hours, according to the Pensacola News Journal. The verdict included more than $16 million in compensatory damages, the newspaper said.

Chestnut said five of the six jurors who heard the case were 45 or younger, which meant he had to show hem how the tobacco industry presented its product before the public awareness campaigns on tobacco risks and dangers in the 1990s, he said.

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Apparently he didn't bother to teach them about personal responsibility...