Tobacco company must pay lung cancer victim’s
family US$37.5 million ‘because they targeted teens
with their advertising’
PUBLISHED: 18:42 GMT, 2 August 2013 | UPDATED: 18:50 GMT, 2 August 2013
A Florida jury has ordered tobacco company R.J. Reynolds to pay $37.5 million for contributing to a lung cancer victim’s death by marketing their cigarettes to youths.
The money will go to the family of Laura Grossman, a mother of two who died in 1995 at the age of 38, roughly 23 years after she started smoking R.J. Reynold’s ‘Vantage’ cigarettes.
Grossman was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1993. Attorneys for her family argued during the 20-day trial that she became addicted to ‘Vantage’ cigarettes at the young age of 15 because the company marketed them to youths.
Jessica Grossman, a mother of two, died of lung cancer in 1995 at the age of 38. She began smoking when she was 15 years old
‘The jury’s message was loud and clear: Big Tobacco should be protecting teens, not killing them,’ said Scott Schlesinger, the Grossman family’s lawyer.
‘They should be curing cancer, not causing it. Instead, they continue to addict kids to nicotine, deliver these death sentences, and then try to blame smokers who they addicted. Their conduct is reprehensible.’
In the 1970s, R.J. Reynolds advertised its ‘Vantage’ cigarettes as containing less harmful chemicals than other cigarettes.
In a newspaper ad from the 1970s, the company states: ‘The thing that makes Vantage so special is that its filter is based on an innovative design concept that gives smokers flavor like a full-flavor cigarette without anywhere near the “tar” or the nicotine.’
The company – which is expected to appeal the jury’s decision – argued during trial that Grossman knew the risks of smoking and that she was responsible for her own death.
Attorneys for Grossman’s family argued that she became addicted to ‘Vantage’ cigarettes at the young age of 15 because the company marketed them to youths
Schlesinger countered that Grossman became addicted to the cigarettes at such a young age that ‘she was no match for Big Tobacco.’
Grossman’s case was originally part of a class action lawsuit on behalf of 700,000 smokers that the Florida Supreme Court threw out in 2006. In its ruling, the court found that tobacco companies knowingly sold dangerous products and kept health risks concealed, but that the case could not proceed as a class action. Instead, the court said each case must be proven individually.
The ruling paved the way for plaintiffs like Grossman’s family to sue tobacco companies for negligence.It also said that smokers and their families need only prove addiction to nicotine and that smoking was the cause of their illnesses or deaths.