A Florida jury handed Scott Schlesinger every plaintiff lawyer’s dream earlier this month when it ordered R.J. Reynolds to pay his clients $37.5 million for the death of smoker Laura Grossman from lung cancer at the relatively young age of 38.
Schlesinger’s clients – Grossman’s husband and two children – won’t be seeing that money anytime soon, however. The verdict joins a string of plaintiff victories in Florida that have punctured Big Tobacco’s reputation for invulnerability in the courtroom, but thanks to vigorous appeals and other legal maneuvering, few of the winners have collected a dime.
“There is no other litigant in the world like tobacco,” Schlesinger told me. “There is no resolution short of trial. And a case doesn’t terminate until every single appellate opportunity is exhausted.”
The verdicts are piling up, however. And Shlesinger says his firm and 30 or 40 others active in tobacco litigation across the state are on the verge of taking what they’re learning in Florida and attacking the tobacco industry elsewhere.
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