Tobacco co ordered to pay $23billion punative damages

How Ironic that this has happened in Florida, US, where Bryan came from who ended in the packets of Australian plain packaged cigarettes as a warning against smoking.

This story is too about smoking. In fact the lies told by cigarette companies over decades that smoking was safe. In this very same state of Florida that Bryan lived and died, a court has handed out the biggest punitive damages ever to smoke company R.J. Reynolds of $23billion, on top of the $16million they have to pay to the surviving widow of a Micheal Johnson who died of lung cancer.

The company must pay Cynthia Robinson, of Pensacola, more than $16 million in compensatory damages and $23 billion in punitive damages due to the death of her husband, Michael Johnson Sr. 

Willie Gary, trial attorney, argued R.J. Reynolds Tobacco withheld information regarding the negative effects of smoking, leading to Johnson's death from lung cancer in 1996. "I think the jury wanted to make a difference," Gary said. 

"All the cards were put on the table to show how the tobacco industry lied and failed to disclose information that could have saved lives, and that's what the jury ruled on in this case." Read more