In 1988, in Newark, New Jersey, Rose Cippollone's family won the first civil suit victory against a tobacco company in United States history. What the Cippollone family did not realize, however, was that its legal battles were only beginning and that Liggett would fight the verdict to the Supreme Court, and beyond.
The Case
Rose Cippollone was born in New Jersey in 1925 and, like many young people lured by slick tobacco industry advertising, she began smoking at an early age. Although there were medical studies linking smoking to health problems, they were not widely publicized. The U.S. Surgeon General did not begin looking into the issue until 1962 and federal laws requiring warning labels were not passed until 1966. Meanwhile, cigarette companies like Liggett had spent billions of dollars advertising the pleasures of smoking without any mention of the risks.
In 1981, Rose was diagnosed with lung cancer caused by smoking and, in 1983, she sued Liggett, the manufacturer of her favorite brands of cigarettes, Chesterfield and L&M. Although Rose died in 1984, her family continued with the case and it went to trial in 1988.
During the four-month trial, the Cippollones introduced evidence establishing:
- Not only did the tobacco companies not warn of the risk of smoking but, to the contrary, they suggested that cigarette smoking was safe, harmless and had the support of medical doctors.
- Tobacco company documents showed a
sophisticated conspiracy to refute, undermine, neutralize, confuse and mislead the public for the purpose of having people continue and start smoking.
- The tobacco companies challenged all evidence of smoking dangers while conducting no research until the 1950s and then set up a bogus Tobacco Institute Research Committee that was highly publicized as the industry's good faith effort to search for the truth, but never did any legitimate research.
The Verdict
In the first ever verdict against a tobacco company, the jury found Liggett 20% responsible and Rose 80% responsible for her death and awarded $400,000.
Appeal and Surrender
Unfortunately for the Cippollones, the jury's verdict was not the end of the case. Liggett immediately appealed and the case crawled through the appellate courts, ultimately reaching the United State's Supreme Court docket in 1991. The central issue on appeal was whether or not federal legislation requiring cigarette warning labels prohibited personal injury lawsuits for failure to warn against the tobacco company. In 1992, the Supreme Court held that the lawsuit was not prohibited, but that certain evidence was improperly admitted during the first trial which required a new trial.
Back to square one, facing the prospects of another lengthy trial against Liggett, the Cippollone family chose to give up rather than retry the case. The lesson was that tobacco companies could be beat, but that it would take a very determined plaintiff to get the job done.
Author Resource:-
Tim Rayne is the author of numerous publications on Personal Injury Law and is a graduate of the Temple University Beasley School of Law's Master's in Trial Advocacy Program. Tim can be reached at http://www.macelree.com/traynelaw.
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