Judge Robert Kaye announces that a Florida jury has found several tobacco companies liable in the first class-action tobacco suit to go to trial.

Updates The Grady Carter Case The Roland Maddox Case The Grady Carter Reversal The Carter Reversal: A Special Report The Engle Class-Action Suit Discuss the Case

MIAMI (Court TV) — After more than a week of deliberations, the Florida jury in the first tobacco class-action suit to go to trial found the tobacco industry liable for illnesses of thousands of sick smokers.

The $200 billion suit was brought in 1994 by Florida pediatrician Howard Engle and eight other lead plaintiffs on behalf of approximately 500,000 sick smokers and heirs of those who died. The plaintiffs alleged that the industry knowingly produced and marketed a defective product that causes causes emphysema, lung cancer and other illnesses. The jury, which deliberated over a complicated 10-question verdict form for eight days, agreed.

The Engle jury could produce the largest monetary award yet against Big Tobacco; the individual claims for each plaintiff under the class-action suit will be decided at another time. The verdict presents a financial burden that could cripple even the $45 billion tobacco industry. And the loss also could open the door to a series of other class actions, which could further weaken the industry.

Facing plaintiffs armed with over 39,000 documents that suggest an industry cover-up of the dangers of smoking, the tobacco industry had to overcome its negative public image and show that the industry should not be held liable for the smokers' illnesses.

Industry attorneys wanted to convince jurors that the Florida smokers are solely responsible for their condition and could have stopped smoking if they had wanted to do so.

The plaintiffs in the Engle case, whose diseases range from asthma to cancer, claimed that smoking is addictive and that the tobacco companies knew about the hazards of smoking, but conspired to hide that knowledge from the public.

The plaintiffs' lawyers, Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, tried to prove their theory by using the same strategy Florida attorney Norwood Wilner employed in his $1 million victory over Brown & Williamson in the June 1998 case involving the family of Roland Maddox.

Wilner used internal Brown & Williamson documents released during 1994 Congressional hearings and the Minnesota tobacco settlement to show that the industry knew about smoking's health risks and orchestrated a cover-up to defraud the public. The Rosenblatts used these same documents in the 10-month Florida trial in their attempts to prove that Big Tobacco is at least partially responsible for the plaintiffs' illnesses.

The Rosenblatts' adopted strategy could become a blueprint for other class actions awaiting trial.

"You could see other attorneys in class-action suits in other jurisdictions put on replica cases," said Mary Aronson, the president of Washington Aronson Research. "While one verdict probably wouldn't bankrupt Big Tobacco, other jurisdictions would learn from the Florida case and present quite similar cases. The damages that could be awarded could eventually be quite devastating to the industry and should concern the tobacco companies."

Tobacco industry attorneys in the Florida case had argued that companies should not be punished for the choices made freely by smokers, pointing out some of the claimants have smoked for nearly 40 years, despite their sicknesses.

Big Tobacco attorney Edward Moss insisted that the Engle case never should have been certified as a class action. Engle and the other Florida plaintiffs, he said, must represent the interests of all the claimants, in this case a whole class of hundreds or thousands of people who have similar illnesses and similar reasons for bringing a suit.

But, according to Moss, there was no such thing as a prototypical plaintiff in the Engle class action. Each of the smokers suffered from different illnesses, have various medical expenses, and contracted their diseases under different circumstances. Engle, whose father also smoked, is a pediatrician who suffers from severe asthma; his co-plaintiff, Raymond Lacey, had both of his legs removed because of an alleged smoking-related circulatory illness, Buerger's Disease. Robert Angell had cancer of the oral pharynx and had to have his voice box removed.

None of the plaintiffs smoked for the same amount of time but all claim that they were (or still are) hopelessly addicted to nicotine. Engle and his fellow plaintiffs, Moss insisted before the trial began last year, are just too dissimilar to represent an entire group of sick smokers.

But the Rosenblatts utilized the incriminating tobacco documents to try to counter any medical doubts Big Tobacco cast on their case.

Still, the industry has been enormously successful in civil suits: most of monetary verdicts against the tobacco companies have been overturned on appeal. A California jury this year awarded $51.5 million to a lifetime Marlboro smoker now terminally ill with cancer. However, two similar verdicts have been overturned on appeal, including the Maddox victory won by attorney Wilner. Philip Morris has vowed to appeal the California jury award, and the tobacco industry will undoubtedly appeal the Florida class-action verdict.

Furthermore, several pending cases against the tobacco industry have been dismissed. In March, an Ohio federal jury rejected the first suit brought by labor unions against the industry. Charging that tobacco company characters like the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel target their blue-collar members, more than 100 unions demanded $2 billion in damages for their health funds' payments to cover smoking-related medical costs. At least nine other similar suits have been dismissed within the last year but at least ten more are awaiting court appearances.

Still, despite the verdict in the Engle case, perhaps the greatest challenge for prospective class-action plaintiffs is just getting to trial. A judge threw out a New York class-action tobacco case last year for two main reasons: the plaintiffs failed to prove that the industry misrepresented its product, and the issues presented by the individual plaintiffs were more appropriate as individual suits. Moss may base his Engle appeal on those same issues.

— Bryan Robinson