Christine Jordan Sexton
With little to no fanfare the House Civil Justice Subcommittee early Monday deferred action on a bill aimed at snuffing out the lawsuits of 4,500 smokers and their families who have sued cigarette manufacturers but still await trial.
Subommittee Chairman Rep. Kathleen Passidomo announced at the beginning of the meeting that the bill, HB 1067, would be temporarily deferred and that she would not bring it back up during Tuesday’s meeting.
A bill that is temporarily deferred must be brought back up at the committee’s next scheduled meeting or it is dead. A look at the House calendar shows the subcommittee is not scheduled to meet next week.
Florida Justice Association lobbyist Paul Jess said he assumes that the bill was TP’d “because the votes were not there to pass it.”
Specifically, HB 1067 would have retroactively applied a 1999 cap on punitive damages to all suits.
The issue stems from a 1994 class action lawsuit on behalf of Howard A. Engle and 700,000 other smokers. After hearing from 157 witnesses over a two-year period a jury decided that the tobacco industry had intentionally misled people about the danger of smoking and in 2000 awarded the class $145 billion in damages.
The tobacco industry appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court which let stand the circuit court’s finding that the tobacco industry committed fraud by deceiving smokers. However, the high court threw out the class-action suit and ruled that smokers must individually prove that cigarettes caused their illnesses. About 4,500 smokers and their families that were part of the class have cases still pending.
