Public Justice Foundation Fights for Justice for All
Public Justice Foundation (PJF) is back before the U.S. Supreme Court in Philip Morris USA v. Williams again, filing an amici brief opposing the tobacco company's latest effort to avoid the jury's $79.5 million punitive damages award in that case. Tony Romanucci, a partner in the Chicago personal injury firm of Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, serves on the board of the PJF.
The case arose out of the untimely death of Jesse Williams, an Oregon man who died from lung cancer caused by his smoking of Philip Morris' cigarettes. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, Williams told his wife that the "cigarette people" had deceived him, that he felt betrayed, and that "they were lying all the time." An Oregon state jury awarded $821,485.50 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million in punitive damages, the equivalent of two-and-a-half weeks profit for Philip Morris. The Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court twice upheld the award as entirely proper.
In February 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case and held that the trial court might have erred in failing to instruct the jury, as Philip Morris proposed, that punitive damage awards cannot be based on harm to smokers other than the plaintiff. It sent the case back to the Oregon Supreme Court for further review. When the Oregon Supreme Court re-reviewed the case, it found that, even if the jury instruction proposed by Philip Morris properly stated the law about harm to other smokers, it mis-stated Oregon law in several respects, so the trial court was correct in declining to use it. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to review that decision, too.
Public Justice's amici brief explains why Philip Morris should not be allowed to circumvent long-standing Oregon law and challenge the trial court's jury instruction about punitive damages when Philip Morris failed to offer a proper jury instruction itself. The brief documents the tobacco industry's 50-year history of abusing the legal process, waging a war of attrition against plaintiffs, and denying its victims access to justice and compensation. It urges the Supreme Court not to give Philip Morris special treatment, exempt it from Oregon procedural requirements, and allow the tobacco industry to further abuse the legal process to deny due process to its victims.
To read the brief, go to http://www.tlpj.org/briefs/Philip Morris Brief07-1216bsactobacco.pdf.
The brief was filed on behalf of Public Justice; the Tobacco Legal Control Consortium; the Tobacco Products Liability Project; the Tobacco Control Resource Center; the Public Health Advocacy Institute; the Tobacco Trial Lawyers Association; and the American Association for Justice.
