• 6/12/2002
  • Miami, FL
  • Catherine Wilson
  • Associated Press

A jury ordered three cigarette makers Tuesday to pay $37.5 million in damages to a lawyer who lost his tongue to cancer. John Lukacs blamed his 30 years of smoking up to three packs a day for his oral and bladder cancer.

Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson and Liggett Group claimed his 20 cancer-free years after he quit smoking pointed to another cause.
The jury deliberated less than eight hours before awarding Lukacs the amount of compensatory damages suggested by his attorneys.

Philip Gerson, one of Lukacs’ lawyers, said the 76-year-old Miami real-estate lawyer and former Navy fighter pilot won’t live long enough to see any money from his courtroom victory. “He knows he will never see any of this money,” Gerson said. Miles McGrane, another lawyer in the case and Lukacs’ son-in-law, said, “We’d give every penny back for another year for him.” Lukacs’ attorneys said he was sobbing when they telephoned him with word of the verdict.

The two-week trial on compensatory damages covered actual medical expenses as well as intangibles, including pain and suffering, for Lukacs and his wife, Yolanda.

The case was an outgrowth of a $145 billion punitive-damage award issued in a class-action suit covering all sick Florida smokers two years ago. That verdict is nearing its first appeal hearing. William Ohlemeyer, associate general counsel for Philip Morris Cos., said Lukacs’ case should not have gone to trial while the tobacco industry is appealing the earlier verdict.

“I think [the trial] was a waste of time and effort and judicial resources,” Ohlemeyer said. Jeff Raborn, Brown & Williamson’s attorney, said Tuesday’s verdict wasn’t surprising, considering the jury had to accept “the faulty findings” of the previous jury. Calls to Liggett were not immediately returned.

Lukacs’ damage claim is the only one allowed by a state appeals court to go to trial since the verdict. His doctors give him seven months to live. Lukacs sued cigarette makers based on the brands he smoked, including free cigarettes in his military rations, until quitting in 1971 or ’72. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1991 and oral cancer in 1997.

The jury split liability among Liggett at 50 percent, Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson at 22.5 percent each and Lukacs at 5 percent. But Lukacs’ attorneys say his fraction disappears, based on findings of fraud and conspiracy by the original jury that produced the punitive-damage verdict. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Amy Steele Donner will have to decide that question.

Steve Hunter, another Lukacs’ attorney, said the 5 percent figure is the lowest liability assigned by a jury in any smoker verdicts.

“People are tired of all the denials and all the lies [by the cigarette companies]. They told us that in this case,” Gerson said.