Tobacco firm hit by $3bn award to cancer victim

A California man, terminally ill with cancer, has won one of the highest financial awards yet in the spate of lawsuits brought against American tobacco companies,

A Los Angeles jury ordered Philip Morris Inc to pay Richard Boeken more than $3bn (£2.2bn), after finding the company liable for his cancer.

Mr Boeken, 56, suffers from lung cancer that has spread to his brain. He gave the thumbs-up as the verdict was read. A self-employed dealer in oil and gas securities, he smoked for 40 years before being diagnosed with cancer two years ago.

His was the first smoking- related lawsuit to be tried in Los Angeles County, but the fourth on the West Coast ­ and all have gone in favour of the plaintiff.

The jury took seven days to reach its decision, after a trial of more than two months. It awarded Mr Boeken nearly $5.5m (£4m) in compensatory damages, and $3bn in punitive damages. The jury found Philip Morris ­ America's biggest manufacturer of cigarettes ­ guilty on all eight of Mr Boeken's claims, including negligence, fraud, misrepresentation and selling a defective product.

Whether Mr Boeken will ever see anything close to the amount of money the jury proposed is uncertain, as such huge awards are often reduced or overturned on appeal. Philip Morris said that it would ask Judge Charles McCoy to set aside the verdict and, failing that, would appeal. A spokesman for the company called the verdict "outrageous" and "wildly out of line". Company shares in Philip Morris fell sharply after the verdict.

Juries in Florida and the West Coast have generally been more sympathetic to the plight of smokers who bring lawsuits against tobacco companies than have juries in other states, with California showing particular hostility to "big tobacco". Until 1997, California banned product-liability lawsuits against tobacco companies. The plaintiffs have won all three cases decided since then, but they are likely to be settled in the state Supreme Court, which has already agreed to hear appeals in the two cases from San Francisco.

One of the main arguments, brought by lawyers for the tobacco companies, is that no evidence should be admissible that relates to the period while the ban on such lawsuits was in effect. All the plaintiffs relied on internal company documents from the four decades to 1997.

If the Supreme Court rejects that argument, the number of cases brought in California is likely to surge. At the moment there is no shortage of would-be plaintiffs, but a considerable shortage of lawyers prepared to take on such cases on a no-fee basis before the state Supreme Court has pronounced.

Explaining the size of the latest award, one of the jurors, Ann Anderson, told the Los Angeles Times: "We got to that figure [$3bn] because we thought that figure would hurt them." Her fellow juror, Denise Key, said: "We want them to be responsible for their product ... we want them to put on their product 'It kills'."

The jury was shown pages of internal files to support Mr Boeken's argument that Philip Morris and its rivals had lied for decades about the risks of smoking and its addictive quality. The perception of misrepresentation and dishonesty was what appeared to fuel the jury's assessment of damages.

For the defence, Maurice Leiter said: "I recognise that this is an unpopular company that makes a dangerous product. But both the verdict and the size of the damages are simply not supported by the evidence."