This fall, the jury is in and personal responsibility is
out.
On Oct. 4, a Los Angeles Superior Court awarded an unprecedented
$28 billion dollars in punitive damages to Betty Bullock, a
64-year-old woman suffering from lung cancer, who claims Philip
Morris failed to warn her of the dangers of smoking.
This staggering award was merely the capstone of an outrageous
trial structured around the philosophy that people and corporations
are not responsible for their own actions. During the trial,
attorneys for both Bullock and Philip Morris employed the
“One, Two, Three, Not It!” strategy. Both sides pointed
fingers every which way in an attempt to remove all liability from
their clients, while ignoring one of the basic truths of adulthood
““ that you are responsible for your own actions.
A good place to start would be with Bullock and her legal team.
Her lead attorney, Michael Piuze, managed to convince the jury that
his client was the victim of an evil corporation, which was
hell-bent on making a profit at the cost of their customer’s
health.
Personally, I think he is right. However, the memory of the jury
is staggering when they can remember the actions taken by Philip
Morris, yet forget that Bullock smoked every pack she ever bought
voluntarily.
Since 1967 the Surgeon General’s warning has been on every
pack of cigarettes produced in the United States. Bullock knew for
35 years that smoking could give her cancer, and yet, according to
witnesses, she never tried to quit. In fact, when her daughter
begged her to quit in the 1970s, she told her “I am an adult,
this is my business.” Suddenly this is all Philip
Morris’ fault? That just doesn’t make sense.
To gain a little perspective on the size of this award,
let’s break it down a little. Bullock had been smoking
approximately one pack a day for the last 47 years. So, let’s
take the award of $28 billion and divide it by 47 years, divide
that by 365 days, and divide that by the 24 cigarettes that are
found in the average pack. Basically, Bullock was awarded $68,000
for every cigarette she ever smoked. With that in mind, I think
I’ll head to the nearest mini-mart, buy a pack of smokes, and
start planning on retirement.
Philip Morris isn’t free from blame either. During those
47 years they engaged in an industrywide campaign to hide the
negative effects of smoking. For years, they denied that tobacco
was addictive, they denied that smoking could lead to cancer, and
they denied that the poor health of people like Bullock had
anything to do with their product.
Evil? Yes. Morally reprehensible? Yes. But were they were the
sole cause of Bullock’s illness? No. She had the power to
quit over the last 47 years and if she had, chances are she
wouldn’t have gotten lung cancer.
The only way I can explain the huge monetary reward is with the
phrase “judicial vigilantism.” This was a jury on a
mission. Gone are the days when a jury is expected to begin a trial
free of bias and preconceived notions of who is right and who is
wrong. As Richard Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern
University in Boston said, “At this point, it’s really
open season on the industry”.
Now, in theory, punishing Big Tobacco for decades of fraud and
deceit is all well and good in my book ““ I think
they’ve had it far too easy, for far too long. However, the
results of this trial deviate so far from established precedent and
litigation law as to remove all credibility from the jury’s
decision.
The sum of $28 billion dollars is so large it will most
certainly be reduced on appeal or even tossed out entirely,
defeating their whole purpose. This verdict was based on emotion
instead of facts, and the jurors tossed personal responsibility out
the window in an attempt to punish Philip Morris and Big Tobacco in
general.
So, in the end, who is right, and who is wrong? Bullock, Philip
Morris, or the jury? Well, they are all wrong. Bullock had every
chance to quit smoking. Philip Morris had every chance to come
clean about the effects of smoking. The jury had every chance to
give a verdict applicable to the case, not one motivated by emotion
and activism.
In the future, Philip Morris and Big Tobacco should be punished
in Congress or the Supreme Court. Until then, tobacco should be
evaluated independently from individual smokers. Maybe then we can
again make personal responsibility fashionable in Los Angeles.