Products Liability Law Reporter

In 1961, when she was 16 years old, Mary Hunt began smoking Kent cigarettes. She became addicted to nicotine and continued smoking one-and-a-half packs of Kent cigarettes per day for several decades. Unable to quit smoking despite many attempts to overcome her addiction, she developed COPD. She was then finally able to quit smoking. Approximately two years later, Hunt was diagnosed as having lung cancer, which led to her death within a year. She is survived by her husband.

Hunt’s husband, on behalf of her estate, filed suit against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., alleging conspiracy, fraud, and misrepresentation. Among other things, the plaintiff asserted that Kent cigarettes were defective and unreasonably dangerous and should not have been sold to Hunt. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant, individually and as successor by merger to Lorillard Tobacco Co., knew for decades that cigarette smoking led to a variety of potentially fatal diseases and that nicotine in cigarettes was highly addictive. The court also added that Lorillard had engaged in a massive and deceptive marketing campaign that falsely portrayed filtered Kent cigarettes as safe.

The jury awarded $4.2 million.

Citation: Hunt v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., No. 2018-00446 (Mass. Super. Ct. Middlesex Cty. Mar. 21, 2022).

Plaintiff counsel: Andrew Rainer, Meredith K. Lever, and Mark Gottlieb, all of Boston; and Stephen R. Fine, Manchester, N.H.

Comment: In Main v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 2022 WL 1051873 (Mass. App. Ct. Apr. 8, 2022), the trial court instructed the jury that the plaintiff had to prove that a reasonable alternative design was available before smoker Richard Main had become addicted to cigarettes. The appellate court found that this was incorrect and prejudicial in that it foreclosed the jury from considering evidence that a reasonable alternative design was or reasonably could have been available at some point during the many years that Main had smoked. The court thus vacated the judgment in favor of the defendants on the plaintiffs’ breach of warranty claim.