Cigarette-makers ordered to pay widow $29 million in husband's death

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — A longtime Delray Beach, Florida, kindergarten teacher won a nearly $29 million verdict against tobacco giants this week for losing what her attorney described as “the love of her life” to lung cancer caused by smoking.

It is the biggest verdict handed down by a Palm Beach County jury in dozens of cases that have gone to trial against cigarette-makers. It eclipses the $20 million a jury awarded a Boynton Beach woman in 2014 for losing her mother to lung cancer caused by decades of smoking.

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Like that case, a jury awarded Linda Enochs both compensatory and punitive damages. Late Tuesday, it awarded her $16.3 million for losing her husband, attorney Thomas Purdo, in 1997 at age 52. On Wednesday, jurors awarded her another $12.5 million to punish R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Philip Morris for the years they spent lying about the dangers of smoking.

“She’ll never have closure,” said attorney Alex Alvarez, who represented Enochs along with lawyers Gary Paige and Jordan Chaikin. “She feels she stood up for herself and her children and she tried to right a wrong.”

Enochs, who remarried several years ago after raising two children alone, declined comment on the advice of her attorneys.

Cigarette-makers weren’t immediately available for comment but they have vowed to appeal any unfavorable decisions.

The case is one of hundreds in Palm Beach County Circuit Court and thousands statewide that are pending against tobacco companies. The lawsuits are collectively known as the “Engle progeny cases” because all were spawned by a 1994 Miami-Dade County class-action lawsuit filed by longtime smoker Dr. Howard Engle.

While a jury awarded $145 billion in damages, the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 threw out the award, ruling that each smoker or their families had to prove their unique damages at separate trials. Since then, the cases have slowly been winding their way through the courts.

During the roughly three-week trial, tobacco lawyers balked at the notion that Purdo, who practiced family law and served on the Delray Beach Planning and Zoning Commission, died of lung cancer caused by a cigarette habit he picked up at age 13. He smoked filtered cigarettes, believing tobacco manufacturers’ claims that they were safer, Alvarez said.

While jurors held Purdo 22 percent responsible for his actions, they made it clear smoking killed him. They held R.J. Reynolds 66 percent responsible and Philip Morris 12 percent responsible for Purdo’s death, based on the type of cigarettes he smoked.

Purdo, who was co-captain of a hockey team at Michigan State University that won a national NCAA championship, died a horrible death, Alvarez said. Enochs, he said, was bereft.

“She married the love of her life,” he said. “They would look in the newspaper at pictures of folks celebrating their 50th wedding anniversaries and always pictured how they would look when they celebrated theirs.”

They never had the chance.

Cox Media Group