LAKLAND, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - A Florida appeals court recently upheld a $3.5 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds over the smoking-related death of a woman but acknowledged its decision conflicted with another appeals court that would have limited punitive damages under a 1999 law.
The conflict could mean another trip to the Florida Supreme Court for the so-called
Engle progeny cases, which are named after a 2006 decision in which the state’s high court dismantled a tobacco class action but allowed thousands of individual plaintiffs to use the findings from earlier trials as proof in their own lawsuits.
Janice Durrance Jones and Julian Dale Durrance filed a wrongful death claim against the tobacco company after their mother Dorothy died of coronary obstructive pulmonary disease in 2000. Since she was diagnosed with lung disease before November 1996, she belonged to the Engle class and was entitled to assert findings of liability against the industry as proof in her own c