A San Francisco jury has awarded $1.36 million in damages to a terminally ill ex-smoker who claimed that he developed a form of cancer linked to asbestos by smoking Kent cigarettes with a filter that contained a particularly dangerous form of the mineral.
The award to Don Lenney is a rare victory for plaintiffs in litigation involving Lorillard Co.’s use of its “Micronite” filter in Kent cigarettes from 1952 to 1956.
Lorillard originally touted Micronite as offering the “greatest health protection in cigarette history,” based on the claim that the Micronite tip removed far more tar and nicotine than its competitors’ filters. Later, however, the company admitted that the Micronite tip contained highly toxic crocidolite, or “African blue”, asbestos.
Lenney, 73, was diagnosed with the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma in November, 2009, and had a lung removed last year. According to the verdict form, the jury found that he smoked Kents when they were sold with the Micronite filter containing asbestos in the 1950s. The jury concluded that both Lorillard and Hollingsworth & Vose, the manufacturer of the filter, were liable for making or selling a product that failed to perform “as safely as an ordinary consumer would have expected.”
In another Micronite filter case, a San Francisco jury in 2000 awarded slightly more than $1 million to the children of a deceased Kent smoker. An award of $2 million by a Baltimore jury in 1999 appears to be the largest in such cases.
But Lorillard and Hollingsworth & Vose generally have been successful in defending Micronite lawsuits as plaintiffs have been unable to show they smoked Kents in the 1950s or that asbestos fibers in the filter caused them to become sick with mesothelioma.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Lorillard says it has won 15 out of 20 trials nationwide.
Also, the verdict in Lenney’s case was far from a complete victory for the plaintiff. The jury did not find that Lorillard or Hollingsworth & Vose were negligent in designing or selling Kents, or that the companies failed to warn of health risks that were “known or knowable” at the time the cigarettes contained the Micronite filter.
It apportioned 35 percent of the fault to Lorillard, 25 percent to Hollingsworth & Vose and the rest to other asbestos suppliers.
The negligence verdict shows that jurors agreed “we didn’t do anything wrong by using asbestos in filters back in the 1950s,” a defense lawyer told the Chronicle.
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