Another Punitive Damages Award in Florida Tobacco Litigation

BusinessWeek reports that a Florida jury has awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $80 million in punitive damages to a smoker's widow in a lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds, as part of the ongoing series of post-Engle trials in that state.

The jury allocated 49% of the fault to the smoker. As a result, the Florida trial judge reduced the total award against R.J. Reynolds, including the punitive damages, by 49 percent. The net result was a judgment of $46.3 million.

I have never seen a California defendant ask a judge to reduce a punitive damages by the percentage of fault allocated to the plaintiff. I have seen many cases in which a defendant argues that the issue of excessiveness should be evaluated in light of the compensatory damages as reduced by the allocation of fault. But aside from arguments on excessiveness, I haven't seen anyone argue that the allocation of fault should result in a direct, corresponding reduction in the punitive damages. Although I haven't researched this extensively, I'm not aware of any California law directly on point. When the California Supreme Court adopted the doctrine of comparative negligence in Yi v. Yellow Cab, the court expressly declined to address the effect of that rule on punitive damages, saying only that "[t]he law of punitive damages remains a separate consideration."

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