| Abstract
| - On Friday, 14 July 2000, the jury in a Florida state court handed down a $145 billion punitive damages verdict against the major US cigarette companies after a trial lasting almost two years. The verdict in “Howard Engle et al vs RJ Reynolds et al,” a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 300,000 to 700,000 Florida smokers harmed by smoking, was the largest punitive damages award in the history of American litigation, dwarfing the $5 billion award against Exxon Mobil for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Attorney Stanley Rosenblatt, who represented the plaintiffs in the case, talked to Ron Davis about the historic verdict (which a “Chicago Tribune” writer called “a roar of moral outrage”) and his 10-year legal war against the tobacco industry. In 1997 Rosenblatt agreed to a $350 million settlement in his other major lawsuit against the tobacco industry — “Norma Broin et al vs Philip Morris Companies et al,” a class action on behalf of flight attendants harmed by secondhand smoke.
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