The case will now return to Levy County Circuit Court by order of the 1st District Court of Appeal, with instructions to determine a lesser amount of damages for the death of James Cayce Horner, who succumbed to lung cancer in 1996, at the age of 78. Horner took up smoking in the 1930s, when he was a teenager. Some of his preferred brands included Pall Mall, Lucky Strike and Camel. Diane Webb, his daughter, sued R.J. Reynolds, claiming wrongful death, negligence and fraud.
The jury heard some emotionally charged testimony about how Mr. Horner helped care for his granddaughter, who suffered from a congenital condition. The care he provided was part of the case for a large financial compensation, because it can not be replicated. (The physical care can, but the relationship can not.) However, the Appeals Court did not find the very large amount of damages initially awarded, to be in line with the loss, as it indicated in its ruling, “The amount of compensatory damages suggests an award that is the product of passion, an emotional response to testimony regarding difficulties Ms. Webb and her father faced and overcame before cancer befell him, rather than evidence of his illness, subsequent death and the noneconomic consequences of the death itself.”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/11/45531.htm
The ruling did, however, reject R.J. Reynolds argument for a reversal, saying it is following the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Carter v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 778 So. 2d 932, 940 (Fla. 2000) The court also rejected an argument from the tobacco company’s lawyers that Dianne Webb had failed to make the case her father had relied upon misinformation and the omission of information by R.J. Reynolds, about the potential health consequences of using their tobacco products. In their own words, “the record contains abundant evidence from which the jury could infer [Mr. Horner’s] reliance on pervasive misleading advertising campaigns . . . and on the false controversy created by the tobacco industry during the years he smoked aimed at creating doubt among smokers that cigarettes were hazardous to health.”
Appellate Opinion (PDF)
A new trial must be held on damages.
To learn more about the Tampa personal injury lawyer or the Joyce & Reyes Law Firm, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529
The post Florida Appeals Court Overturns $79 Million Wrongful Death Verdict Against R.J. Reynolds first appeared on SEONewsWire.net.]]>Oxycodone abuse has reached epidemic proportions. The addictions and deaths resulting from this abuse have become a public health problem, if not a crisis. Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske has called Florida ground zero for this substance abuse problem.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 93% of unintentional poisonings in 2007 were from drug overdoses. Florida experienced an increase of 325% in the number of non-suicidal poisonings resulting in death from 1990 to 2001. In the last five years, Florida has experienced a boom in the growth of pain clinics dispensing oxycodone and alprazolam. From 2003 to 2009 there were over 16,000 drug overdose deaths in Florida. About one third of them were related to illicit drugs. Nearly 86 percent were unintentional. About eleven percent were suicides.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6026a1.htm
Given the alarming and disturbing loss of life associated with prescription medication abuse, it is especially shocking that one “pill mill” pain clinic in Florida was 20,000 square feet in size with doctors able to see five hundred “patients” daily. The two brothers mentioned above, as the main operators of several pain clinics, were associated with the trafficking of about 20 million doses of oxycodone. That number of doses was dispensed in just three years. About 53 deaths are thought to have resulted from overdoses from their drugs, and those were just the ones in Florida. Because about 80 to 90 percent of the total number of overdose deaths is thought to have taken place in other states such as Kentucky and Tennessee, the death total is likely to be much higher.
Shutting down the two brothers and their robust prescription drug business has been a real blow to the national pill mill industry. Authorities learned better surveillance and documentation techniques, improving their effectiveness. These endeavors can help authorities crack down even further, to help reduce the the country’s large number of prescription drug fatalities.
Robert Joyce is a Tampa pill mill litigation attorney at Joyce & Reyes Law Firm. To learn more about the Tampa pill mill litigation lawyer, visit http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/ or call 1.888.771.1529.
The post Florida Pill Mill Brothers Taken Down first appeared on SEONewsWire.net.]]>