Posted on 12/14/2010 2:52:48 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
A Massachusetts jury today ordered cigarette manufacturer Lorillard Inc. to pay $71 million in damages to a dead smoker's family for allegedly seducing the Boston woman decades ago into smoking Newport cigarettes.
The Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded compensatory damages of $50 million to the estate of Marie Evans and $21 million to her son, William Evans. A hearing on punitive damages in the lawsuit has been scheduled for Thursday. The total amount of damages awarded could rise significantly at that hearing.
The case was the first to claim that Lorillard had decided to target minority communities with samples of Newports, a menthol brand more popular among black communities.
Gregg Perry, a Lorillard spokesman, said the company denied the allegations. He said the company would appeal and was "confident it will prevail."
The jury found that the cigarette company was negligent in passing out samples of cigarettes to Evans and other black children when they were growing up in the Orchard Hill housing development in Boston's Roxbury section -- and in denying for years the health risks associated with cigarettes.
Evans was 54 when she died of lung cancer in 2002 after smoking Newports for more than 40 years. Weeks before she died, she gave a videotaped deposition that was played for jurors in which she said she received the samples when she was as young as 9 years old, and she would trade them for candy. By the time she was 13, she said, she started smoking them.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
My father told me every once in a while he would get some free cigs when he went to the grocery store...and he would only see them in the black part of town though he didn’t mention anything about kids.
I’m not blaming the cigarette companies and that woman made her choice long ago but lets be honest, some standards didn’t apply back them especially in black neighborhoods. Growing up I got an earful of horror stories from my father and grandfather on the crap both the city and private companies pulled and got away with back then.
I remember in high school the stores that would sell cigs to underage teens. “Sold” being the operative word. It wasn’t the tobacco industry, it was a local merchant. In addition, EVERYBODY “knew” the stores that would sell underage teens beer and wine. In my experience,we would go predomintly to the “black” part of town. No questions asked. And, NO, they didn’t “give” us cigarettes and beer.
touche
You could, but they don't have insurance coverage or attachable assets.
What about the Rat politicians that gave cigarettes to minority voters as incentive to get out and vote?
And what about the US military that included cigarettes in K-ration packages?
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