R.J. Reynolds wins jury verdict in Budnick ''Engle progeny'' lawsuit

Client(s) R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company

Jones Day successfully represented R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in an "Engle progeny" lawsuit. On August 26, 2010, after two weeks of trial, a state court jury in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida returned a verdict in favor of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in an "Engle progeny" lawsuit. The jury deliberated for nearly eight hours before reaching its verdict, which fully vindicated R.J. Reynolds.

The plaintiff, acting as personal representative for his deceased father (who had smoked cigarettes manufactured by R.J. Reynolds) asserted claims for strict liability, negligence, fraudulent concealment, conspiracy, and breach of express and implied warranty. He argued that his father was a member of the class decertified by the Florida Supreme Court in Engle v. Liggett Group, Inc., 945 So. 2d 1246 (Fla. 2006), and that he was therefore entitled to the benefit of certain generalized findings made by a jury in the course of the Engle class action trial in 1999. As in other Engle progeny lawsuits, the threshold issue was whether the smoker (in this case the plaintiff's father) qualified as a member of the Engle class. This required the jury to decide whether the plaintiff's father was addicted to cigarettes containing nicotine, and if so, was such addiction a legal cause of his death. Budnick was the fourteenth Engle progeny case to go to trial in the 17th Judicial Circuit of Florida and was the first to end in a complete defense verdict.

Budnick v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Case No. 2007-CV-036734(19) (Fla. 17th Cir. Ct.)