Posted on 11/25/2003 3:59:46 AM PST by sopwith
MANCHESTER — A jury yesterday rejected a Manchester widow’s claims that Philip Morris was responsible for the lung cancer death of her husband, a lifelong Marlboro smoker.
Julien Longden, a Vietnam War veteran who worked as a supervisor for a Nashua vacuum pump company, was 49 when he died in May 2000.
“I don’t understand it, I don’t know what happened,” said Sheila Longden after the decision was handed down.
The verdict, delivered after two days of deliberation, brought an end to the first product liability case against a tobacco company ever to go to trial in New Hampshire. The trial in Hillsborough County Superior Court began Oct. 6 and ran 25 days.
“It was very difficult,” said a woman juror who asked not to be named. “It was rough. We had a problem with both sides. We were all skeptical.”
The juror said because of the way the verdict forms were worded, jurors couldn’t hold Philip Morris legally responsible, even though they thought the company deceived consumers and put profits above people’s health.
“Morally we wanted to accuse them, and we couldn’t because of the way the charges were worded,” she said.
Mrs. Longden’s lawyers called in former top tobacco company scientists as witnesses to prove Philip Morris made a defective product — that Marlboros had been engineered to be more addictive, and therefore more lethal, than other cigarettes.
The plaintiff also contended that Philip Morris hid scientific evidence about addictive and cancer-causing properties of cigarettes from the public and that Julien Longden didn’t realize how injurious smoking was until he was diagnosed with cancer in 1998.
“We had a hard time believing that the plaintiff, along with her husband, could be oblivious until 1998, when his cancer was diagnosed, that they weren’t aware cigarette smoking would cause cancer,” the juror said.
Lawyers for Philip Morris argued that smoking is inherently risky and Marlboros are no more dangerous than any other cigarette. They produced newspaper articles and other evidence documenting that the general public knew about the hazards of smoking for 50 years.
“It’s been a long haul, and the jury returned defense verdicts on each of the claims,” said Thomas J. Griffin, national counsel for Philip Morris.
He said the case was about individual choice.
“Mr. Longden was aware of the risks yet he chose to smoke for 36 years, and jurors felt it was inappropriate for him to recover after smoking for such a long time and not quitting,” Griffin said.
A lot was at stake for Charles G. Douglas III, a former congressman, state Supreme Court justice and successful lawyer, who took on Philip Morris despite the difficulty of the case.
“These are tough cases and we knew it going in, and Sheila knew it going in,” said Douglas, who estimated he had about $100,000 invested in the case.
“Tobacco companies still win more cases than they lose, but we were hopeful . . . It was worth the struggle, worth doing. I don’t have any regrets for having done it.”
Before the verdict, Philip Morris’ Griffin commented, “They made a big investment, they brought in experts from around the country and tried an aggressive case . . . And we responded in kind.”
Goodwin Procter, the Boston law firm defending Philip Morris, had eight attorneys, three paralegals and two secretaries in New Hampshire. Files and equipment were set up in a temporary office at the Wayfarer in Bedford for the past six weeks.
Griffen said he had no idea how much it cost to defend Longden v. Philip Morris.
Philip Morris USA, according to a Nov. 13 Securities and Exchange Commission filing, as of Sept. 30 had spent $463 million over two years defending product liability cases.
Recently, a jury awarded a Missouri man whose cancerous larynx was removed $1.6 million and his wife $500,000 for loss of companionship. The award was halved because the jury found the smoker 50 percent responsible.
Anti-tobacco activist Edward L. Sweda said the New Hampshire jury did not have the option of comparative fault. “It was an all-or-nothing approach, which is much more difficult to prove,” he said.
Sweda, senior attorney for the Tobacco Control Resource Center at the Northeastern University School of Law, said the comparative fault issue is one that could be explored for an appeal.
Defense attorney Griffin, looking back at the evidence presented over a six-week span, said jurors got two disparate versions of events.
He compared the opposing positions to “two ships passing in the night” with the plaintiff focusing solely on Philip Morris’ actions and the defense solely on Julien Longden’s smoking history and what he knew about the dangers of smoking.
It's about time a jury holds the choice holder responsible for their actions.
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