A $13.5 million verdict at trial in Rey v R.J. Reynolds was successful because attorneys convinced Miami jurors that it was the ‘biomechanical brain’ of Fernando Rey that continued the risk of smoking cigarettes, according to a local attorney.
“Engle progeny actions place addiction, a psychomedical concept, within an entirely new realm — the law,” said Nicole Clark, business and litigation attorney and founder of Trellis Law, an artificial intelligence-powered legal database. “This creates a series of new tensions, most notably with the ‘reasonable legal person’ standard."
Engle progeny claims were formed after Howard Engle filed a class action lawsuit that the Florida Supreme Court decertified, which paved the way for individual class members to pursue their own legal actions against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
Clark
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The 1994 litigation represented some 100,000 smokers who were addicted to nicotine.
Engle, a Miami Beach physician, was a lifelong smoker and plaintiff in the lawsuit in which Engle alleged he smoked a few packs of cigarettes every day, according to media reports. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lymphoma killed Engle on July 22, 2009.
“Juries must assess the extent to which it is ‘the biomechanical brain’ or ‘the legal person’ that continues to smoke cigarettes,” Clark told the Florida Record. “The plaintiffs will argue it’s the former, which highlights the decedent’s unsuccessful efforts to quit with smoking-cessation aids. This was one of the most successful maneuvers made by the attorneys in Rey v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co."
While Rey's attorney, Nick Reyes argued that his client was so hooked to cigarettes he was unable to quit despite bouts with various smoking-cessation aids, R.J. Reynold's attorneys argued that it was the plaintiff's own smoking-related decisions that caused his disease and subsequent death.
As previously reported, an 11th Judicial Circuit Court jury found Rey’s lung cancer death was caused by Camel cigarette addiction but jurors did not allocate full responsibility to Rey. Further, the post-verdict award was lowered due to a lack of punitive damages.
“Any attempt to measure effectiveness is a relational practice,” Clark added. “In the case of Engle progeny litigation, the reasonable legal person standard combines with an opportunity to apportion fault, creating shades of gray that challenge binary arguments about ‘the biomechanical brain’ or ‘the legal person’. This is important because without an opportunity to compare and apportion fault, juries may be pressed to decide cases against the plaintiff, producing legal outcomes that are legal, but not necessarily just.”