When the massive $145 billion verdict returned by a Miami jury in 2000 was overturned by an appellate court, around $580 million was set aside by the tobacco companies as a trust fund for the members of the class-action suit that was thrown out.
Now, after some controversial decisions about whom to award money to earlier this year, smokers have been officially filing claims for their smoking-related illnesses, and the number of claims received by the fund trustees totaled 40,000, around twice the expected number.
To participate in the fund, smokers have to prove that they smoked, were addicted to cigarettes and were Florida residents with one of several smoking-related illnesses before Nov. 21, 1996. For many, the fund amount is small consolation for the massive verdict that was overturned several years ago, which could have granted thousands of victims millions of dollars each
It’s been a busy week at Total Injury, with plenty of new articles and updates for your reading pleasure:
New articles of interest include Supreme Court Strengthens Anti-Discrimination Legislation, California Prison Reform and Healthcare and Michigan Challenges Its No-Fault Insurance Mandate with Optional Caps.
Check out our new Product Recalls update page, with updates this week that feature Mommy’s Bliss Nipple Cream, Simmons Children’s Crib Mattresses and ETHEX morphine sulfate tablets.
A woman who works as a satellite feed coordinator for Fox News has filed a personal injury lawsuit in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court against the landlord of the office building where she works, according to an article on Law.com. Jane Clark claims that she was bitten by bedbugs last year at work and as a result of the bites suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Clark alleges that an investigation determined that the source of the bedbugs was another Fox employee who unwittingly brought the bugs to work with him.
Ms. Clark’s personal injury lawyer has experience with bedbug cases, but says this is the first time that he knows of that someone has been bitten by bedbugs at work. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the buildings owners, a management company and two maintenance companies. Interestingly enough, Clark’s employer is not named as a defendant in the case although the injury allegedly happened at work. Perhaps the reasoning for that is simple enough - employers can rarely be sued for workplace injuries as they are generally covered by workers’ compensation insurance regardless of fault.
Generally the basis of a personal injury lawsuit is an actual injury, or at least some type of actual damages. However, from time to time a case comes along that pushes the boundaries of reality too far and makes a farce of the judicial system.
For some reason a Canadian hairdresser had been awarded $341,775 in damages in a personal injury lawsuit that he filed after finding a fly in his water bottle. Waddah (Martin) Mustapha claimed in his lawsuit that he suffered extreme emotional trauma because he saw the fly in his water bottle. He did not actually drink from the bottle of water.
In a moment of sanity, the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the award for damages that were awarded to Mustapha in a lower court. The Globe and Mail reported that the court found that Culligan of Canada Ltd. could not have reasonably foreseen the man’s extreme reaction to merely seeing the fly and can not possibly be found liable for his psychological disturbance.
An infamous Washington, D.C., judge who raised eyebrows after suing a dry cleaner for $64 million over a lost pair of pants has filed a new lawsuit, this time city, alleging that he was victimized by “unlawful demotion and subsequent termination” after being ridiculed for his high-priced trousers.
The controversial company behind the country’s most popular stun gun among law enforcement officers, Taser International, has finally lost a product liability lawsuit over one of its products. Though Taser has quietly settled dozens of injury lawsuits, this is the first time that a jury has defied Taser’s claims that its products are essentially harmless and found that not only did the Taser M26 used to shock Robert Heston before his death contribute to the death but, more importantly, that Taser International was liable for failing to provide adequate warning in its training and promotional materials that the stun device had potential lethality.
The jury awarded Robert Heston’s family $1 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $5.2 million in punitive damages. Though they determined that Heston was 85% comparatively negligent in his death, only the compensatory award will be reduced; the punitive damage award will remain.
