GAINESVILLE - The trial of a tobacco company found largely responsible for the death of a 39-year-old Florida man ended dramatically Monday in the punitive damages stage as the jury sent a note to the judge stating they were deadlocked.
After hearing arguments from the plaintiff and defense attorneys, the jury returned after 50 minutes of deliberations to deliver the note to Judge Donna Keirn, of the 8th Judicial Circuit sitting in Alachua County.
The note read, "We will not be able to reach a unanimous decision regardless of how long we stay here. We are hung!"
After some deliberation and discussion among the lawyers and the bench, a mistrial was declared and the jury discharged.
The jury had already awarded $2 million to the family of Tyrone Dixon after finding that R.J. Reynolds was 58 percent responsible for his death, and that the company was involved in a decades-old conspiracy to suppress information about the deadly dangers of nicotine. That verdict and award stands.
Dixon died in 1994 of a brain hemorrhage, which his family claimed, and the jury agreed, was linked to his diagnosis of laryngeal, or throat, cancer a year earlier.
The jury assessed that the tobacco company was 58 percent responsible, apportioning the remainder to Dixon. It awarded $1.3 million to Dixon's wife, and the remainder split between his two daughters.
At the punitive damages hearing, or phase two of the trial, Friday the Dixon family's attorney, Philip Green, told the jury that R.J. Reynolds should face severe penalties as punishment for its involvement in a conspiracy stretching back to the 1950s, and as a deterrent to other companies.
The jury also heard the deposition of a financial expert who estimated R.J. Reynolds' current net worth at between $22 and $24 billion. The company's daily revenue was $11 million, amounting to $8.6 million after tax.
Attorney Green said the jury should remember the "cynical and consistent" nature of the conspiracy, and the company's financial resources.
Defense attorney Ray Persons told the jury that they must only consider the conduct of the company in this specific case when evaluating punitive damages, if any. He pegged the amount, if any, at $200,000.
Persons said there were mitigating factors, including that the company had publicly acknowledged both the addictive and damaging nature of its product in 2000, and that it pays the FDA more than $500 million a year to regulate its activities.
But Green countered that the acknowledgement came years after the death of Dixon and that the FDA payments were forced on tobacco companies by Congress.
Punitive damages have been awarded in cases stemming from the so-called Engle progeny, including $27 million in a action out of Broward County that ended in February.
But appeals courts have also questioned the amount of punitive damages awarded, including striking down a $30 million award and sending it back to trial court for reconsideration.
The Engle progeny dates to the 1994 filing of a class action that ultimately led to a jury award of $145 billion in punitive damages against several tobacco companies.
An appellate court reversed the award, a finding with which the state Supreme Court agreed, but crucially made clear that those issues decided in the class action were not debatable in the individual cases.
Juries begin deliberations in all cases with the instruction that it is a fact that cigarettes are addictive, dangerous, and the cause of multiple diseases, and that the tobacco companies are liable for negligence, fraud and conspiracy. The only debate is over whether a link can be made to an individual's death.
Some 2,700 Engle progeny cases are still pending in Florida courts