Judge Delays Florida Smokers Trial

By RACHEL LA CORTE
03:32 PM ET 09/10/99

MIAMI (AP), A judge rejected mistrial motions Friday and delayed the damage phase of a landmark Florida smokers trial for a month to allow for a possible rehearing of a recent appeals court ruling.  Circuit Judge Robert Kaye delayed the next phase of the first smokers' class-action trial until Oct. 12 while their attorneys pursue a request for reconsideration of the appeal.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled last week that the jury must decide punitive damages one smoker at a time instead of a setting a single dollar amount covering up to 500,000 sick Florida smokers, eliminating prospects for a blockbuster award. In July, the same jury decided the industry produced a defective product that causes emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

The delay gives the smokers' lawyers 20 days to substitute the husband of a woman who died of lung cancer as a class representative.

The first two plaintiffs due for determination of damages are Angie DellaVecchia and Mary Farnan. Mrs. DellaVecchia, 53, died July 25, and the smokers' attorneys want to substitute her husband Ralph as her survivor.

Kaye also ruled on more than a dozen motions by both sides.  He denied three mistrial motions by the tobacco industry and rejected their requests to drop Mrs. Farnan and Mrs. DellaVecchia as the opening plaintiffs.

One mistrial motion argued jurors must have been biased by publicity about their verdict even though they had been instructed to avoid news coverage of the case.

Kaye granted an industry motion to split the damage phase into two mini-trials: one on compensatory damages to be followed by one on punitive damages for the two women.

The jury heard eight months of testimony and was given thousands of industry documents garnered over decades of tobacco litigation before ruling against Big Tobacco.

The defendants are the nation's five largest cigarette makers, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Lorillard Tobacco and the Liggett Group, and two industry associations, the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute Inc.

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