Here's what my friend said:
I pulled up the article, but it doesn't give any of the facts.
You're assuming that the facts are well known because they have been in your lifetime. We don't know when this person started smoking and what risks were made known to the public then. The tobacco companies, however, evidently knew of the risks long before they were required to tell the public about them. There is also the addictive quality of cigarette smoking that the companies knew about. So even if a smoker knew that long-term smoking could cause cancer, they might "take the risk" because they assumed that they could always just stop smoking long before it got to the point of being risky. If they weren't made aware of the risks of becoming addicted (which the companies were aware of), the fact that plaintiff might have known that smoking could cause cancer would not be the end of the story.
There's also a cumulative effect, when it comes to the tobacco companies. They have had a lot of bad PR where they held up their right hands in front of Congress, various movies about whistle-blowers in the tobacco industry, disclosure of "smoking gun" documents (pardon the expression), etc., all of which has a subtle effect on jurors, even if they profess otherwise during jury selection. For there to be a $300 million verdict, the jury would have had to be angry at the defendant, usually because of smoking gun documents, company witnesses made to look like liars on the witness stand, what the jury perceives to be unfair or dirty tactics on the part of defense counsel, etc. Unless the facts of the case and the trial are made known, I can only speculate.
Topic: Smoker sues tobacco company and wins verdict. 300 million (Read 3591 times)