MIAMI – A Florida state jury has ordered the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company to pay $23.6 billion in punitive damages to the wife of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer, her attorneys said.
“We hope that this verdict will send a message to RJ Reynolds and other big tobacco companies that will force them to stop putting the lives of innocent people in jeopardy,” plaintiff Cynthia Robinson’s lawyer Willie Gary said in a statement.