Duval County Jury Awards $1.83M Against R.J. Reynolds in Smoker Wrongful-Death Case; Final Judgment $730,000

Kenneth Hiott smoked for roughly 28 years, consuming an estimated 200,000 cigarettes. He died in 1996 from lung cancer. His widow, Carolyn Hiott, was appointed personal representative of his estate and, acting on behalf of the family, brought a wrongful-death action against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Duval County Circuit Court.

The lawsuit was part of the wave of Engle-progeny litigation that followed the Florida Supreme Court's 2006 ruling permitting individual tobacco plaintiffs to rely on the original Engle class findings. Carolyn Hiott's complaint asserted strict liability, negligence, fraudulent concealment, and civil conspiracy claims, all centered on Reynolds's decades-long conduct in concealing the addictive and lethal nature of its cigarettes.

The plaintiff's trial team included attorneys Charles Farah and Eddie Farah of Farah and Farah, P.A., along with co-counsel from The Wilner Firm and Milberg LLP, who argued that Kenneth Hiott became addicted to nicotine and that Reynolds's fraudulent concealment was a legal cause of his death. In 2012, the jury found for the plaintiff in Phase I on the strict liability, negligence, and fraudulent concealment claims, awarding $1.6 million to Carolyn Hiott and $225,000 to Kenneth Hiott's son from a previous marriage, for a combined $1.825 million in compensatory damages. No punitive damages were awarded. The jury assigned 60 percent of the fault to Kenneth Hiott and 40 percent to Reynolds.

Applying that allocation, the trial court reduced the total award proportionally and entered a final judgment of $730,000 against Reynolds. Reynolds posted a supersedeas bond and appealed to Florida's First District Court of Appeal. Carolyn Hiott cross-appealed, arguing that comparative fault should not apply to the intentional-tort claims.

The First DCA issued its opinion on January 3, 2014. The court rejected both Reynolds's arguments and Hiott's cross-appeal, affirming the $730,000 judgment in full. On the cross-appeal, the court held that Hiott had not clearly preserved the issue of whether comparative fault was barred as to the intentional-tort counts, and therefore the waiver argument controlled. The court certified a conflict with another district on a statute-of-repose question, but that certification did not affect the outcome for the Hiott family. The $730,000 judgment stood.