A VERY LARGE AWARD

A U.S. court has awarded punitive damages of US$23.6 billion to the widow of a man who died from lung cancer after smoking all his life. The award is against RJ Reynolds, the country's second biggest cigarette company.

The above is not a typo; I really did mean to write billion and not million. The compensatory damages were US$16.8 million, which does not compensate for death, but is still a fairly sizeable amount.

This sort of thing merely brings the justice system into contempt, in my view. Negligence claims, both guilt and amount, used to be decided by a jury in all common law jurisdictions. In England and Wales, the rules were changed so that these things are decided by a judge, precisely in order to stop such idiocies. In America, the old system lingers on.

Cigarette companies have undoubtedly been cavalier about the risks of smoking, but not to such an extent that an individual (and their lawyers) should be able to get their hands on what represents the GDP of a small country. Thankfully, many of these ridiculous tort awards get reduced in the U.S. on appeal. I suspect that this one will be as well, and rightly so.

Walter Blotscher