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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014
NEWS & TRENDS
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014
When a Florida jury awarded $23.6 bil-
lion in punitive damages to a longtime
smoker’s widow, R.J. Reynolds Tobac-
co (RJR) wasted no time in protesting.
The nation’s No. 2 cigarette maker has
vowed to fight the verdict, calling it
“grossly excessive and impermissible
under state and constitutional law.”
“This verdict goes far beyond the
realm of reasonableness and fairness,
and is completely inconsistent with
the evidence presented,” said RJR ex-
ecutive J. Jeffery Raborn, a company
vice president and assistant general
counsel, in a statement about the case.
“We plan to file post-trial motions with
the trial court promptly, and are confi-
dent that the court will follow the law
and not allow this runaway verdict to
stand.”
Meanwhile, the widow’s attorneys
are touting the verdict as sending a
powerful message to tobacco compa-
nies. “The jury wanted to send a state-
ment that tobacco cannot continue
to lie to the American people and the
American government about the ad-
dictiveness of, and the deadly chemi-
cals in, their cigarettes,” said Christo-
pher Chestnut, one of the attorneys
representing Cynthia Robinson.
The case is one of thousands pend-
ing in Florida following the state
Supreme Court’s 2006 decision to
dismiss a $145 billion class-action
verdict, which also said that smokers
and their families need only prove ad-
diction and that smoking caused their
illnesses or deaths. Robinson individ-
ually sued Reynolds in 2008 on behalf
of her late husband, Michael Johnson
Sr., who died in 1996, winning the
punitive damages as well as an addi-
tional $16.8 million in compensatory
damages.
RJR Calls $23.6 Billion Verdict “Grossly Excessive”
Company will fight the jury’s decision.
Many of the 75,735 comments made
during the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration’s public comment period for
its proposed deeming rule focused
on premium cigars, according to New
York-based financial services firm
Cowen and Company. Premium cigar
smokers and retailers submitted more
than 47,000 of the comments received
during the 90-day comment period as
compared with some 3,500 submis-
sions relating to electronic cigarettes.
These included approximately 1,653
comments related to vaping, 545 on e-
liquids and 380 on advertising restric-
tions.
Many of the comments referenced
the potential health benefit of the cat-
egory, pointing to the products’ effi-
cacy as a path to smoking cessation.
For example, Lorillard, which owns
blu, argued in its comment that “[t]he
science developed to date shows that
electronic cigarettes have the potential
to play a critical role in smoking risk
reduction and to significantly advance
the public health. Available scientific
information indicates that electronic
cigarettes do not encourage smoking
initiation; that they could help some
smokers quit smoking; and that elec-
tronic cigarettes expose users to far
lower levels of harmful or potentially
harmful constituents (HPHCs) than
conventional cigarettes. All of these
data suggest that electronic cigarettes
can offer long-term, population-level
health benefits.
“Given this potential, Lorillard urges
FDA to implement its tobacco product
authorities for electronic cigarettes
in a thoughtful and prudent manner,
proportional to the harm-reduction
potential that these products present.
Aspects of the existing regulatory sys-
tem for conventional tobacco products
are not well-suited for electronic ciga-
rettes,” the letter concluded.
Many of the manufacturers and as-
sociations commenting on the propos-
al conceded that restrictions on sales
to minors are appropriate, but went on
to express concern about over-regula-
tion of the nascent category.
Deeming Regs Draw Comments
The FDA’s proposed deeming rule prompted more than 75,000 public comments.
