Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, in Chicago, Hails Supreme Court Ruling
March 31, 2009 – Antonio M. Romanucci, a partner at the Chicago personal injury firm of Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, and a board member of the Public Justice Foundation, hailed today’s U.S. Supreme Court against tobacco giant Philip Morris as a victory for consumers. The Court issued a one-sentence order today in Philip Morris USA v. Williams saying, "The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted."
The order rejects the tobacco company's latest challenge to the jury's $79.5 million punitive damages award in that case. This is exactly what the Court should have done. Public Justice had filed an amici brief explaining that Philip Morris had not legally preserved the challenge it was trying to make.
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. But the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review that decision, too.
Public Justice's amici brief explained 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 documented 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 urged 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 Public Justice amici brief in Philip Morris v. Williams, go to: http://www.tlpj.org/briefs/Philip%20Morris%20Brief07-1216bsactobacco.pdf
