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Widow's Legal Battle With Philip Morris Ends
Philip Morris to pay $82 million

Parts excerpted from the Los Angeles Times, 3/21/06

Five years after a landmark defeat in a Los Angeles courtroom, tobacco giant
Philip Morris USA has exhausted its appeals and will have to pay record damages
of more than $82 million to the widow of a longtime smoker of its Marlboro
cigarettes.

Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a 2001
verdict in the case filed by Richard Boeken of Topanga. Boeken, who began
smoking in his teens, died of cancer at 57, shortly after the verdict in the
first suit by an individual smoker ever tried in Los Angeles.

Although cigarette makers have agreed to some major settlements, including $246
billion to end lawsuits by the states, in more than 50 years of litigation, they
have had to write checks to only a handful of individual smokers.

The Boeken award - consisting of $5.54 million in compensatory damages, $50
million in punitive damages and more than $26 million in interest - will be the
largest recovery by an individual to date. 

It will eclipse the previous record payment of $16.7 million last year to a
former smoker from Glendale. Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group Inc. and the
top U.S. cigarette maker, lost that case too.

Boeken's widow, Judy Boeken, could not be reached for comment. But her lawyer,
Michael Piuze of Los Angeles, said she "is happy that the litigation's over." 

Ed Sweda, senior attorney for the Boston-based Tobacco Products Liability
Project, which encourages lawsuits against the tobacco industry, said the
Supreme Court's decision not to accept the appeal "demonstrates that tobacco
litigation remains a viable - and still emerging - strategy to promote the
public health."

Still, the award is a wisp of its original self. Outraged jurors in Los Angeles
County Superior Court had ordered Philip Morris to pay Boeken $3 billion in
addition to compensatory damages in June 2001 after finding the company guilty
of fraud, negligence, misrepresentation and selling a defective product.

Weeks later, the trial judge sliced the punitive award to $100 million. A
California appeals court then trimmed it to $50 million, despite its finding
that Philip Morris' conduct was "extremely reprehensible."

"The very conduct that injured Boeken was directed at all smokers in the United
States, repeated over many years with knowledge of the risk to human life and
health," and demonstrated "intentional deceit," the state appeals court ruled
last year. 

But the panel also cited a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that punitive damages
usually should not exceed nine times the compensatory damages. That ratio was
reflected in the state appeals court ruling. 

Piuze had argued that the ratio was a guideline, not a rule, and should not
protect a company that he said was responsible for millions of deaths.

Although the court's decision Monday was a victory for the plaintiff, Piuze said
he was not satisfied "with the end result, which is a penalty of one half week
of earnings" for Philip Morris.

Steven Rissman, associate general counsel for Altria Corporate Services Inc.,
another unit of Altria, said Monday that he was not surprised the Supreme Court
declined to review the case. "You can never have the highest of expectations
when you're talking about a court that accepts less than 100 of the 7,000
petitions that it's presented each year." 

Legal analysts believe that the court may be more likely to consider an appeal
of another verdict that went well beyond the 9-to-1 guideline.

It's an Oregon case in which the $80-million award against Philip Morris
includes $79.5 million in punitive damages and $521,000 in compensatory damages
- a ratio of more than 152 to 1.

The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the verdict last month, setting the stage for
a last-ditch appeal to the nation's highest court.  The Boeken verdict was among
a string of four straight big defeats for cigarette makers in Los Angeles and
San Francisco superior courts. 

Joseph W. Cherner
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the 
world.  Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."    Margaret Mead