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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions Info About ASH | ash.org | To Join ASH |
Excerpts from COURT BACKS $349 MILLION TOBACCO DEAL DISSIDENT GROUP LODGED CHALLENGE
NOREEN MARCUS, Sun-Sentinel [03/22/99]
A state appeal court in Miami on Wednesday upheld the $349 million deal that ended the nation's first class-action trial against Big Tobacco.
The October 1997 settlement creates a $300 million medical foundation to study diseases associated with secondhand smoke. Nonsmoking flight attendants sued because of illnesses they said they contracted from years of working in smoky airplane cabins.
The ruling was hailed by Norma Broin, the Virginia flight attendant for whom the suit was named, and John Banzhaf, a leader of the nonsmokers' rights movement.
Banzhaf called the ruling "a major victory for nonsmokers, and it certainly suggests that other similar suits will be filed and will be successful." Banzhaf, founder of Action on Smoking and Health and a law professor at George Washington University, said he expects to see lawyers and workers in still-smoky workplaces, such as bars and casinos, emboldened by the settlement to sue the tobacco industry. Smoking is no longer allowed on domestic and most international flights.
A group of 59 dissident flight attendants and their attorneys, led by Alan Morrison of Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., consumer group, challenged the deal. They said it gave them no money or other concrete benefits.
The dissidents also attacked as too high the $46 million fee for attorneys Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, who represented the flight attendants for almost seven years and invested $3 million in the case. The settlement covers those costs.
The appellate court approved both the deal and the fee.
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