Law 1 - Boeken

Issue: Richard Boeken began smoking Marlboro cigarettes in the mid 1950’s at the age of 10, at this time countless cigarette advertisements targeted young men claiming the “Marlboro man” was healthy, powerful, and manly. Evidence showed that scientists in the mid 1950’s uniformly accepted that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer; but Philip Morris and other tobacco companies campaigned substantial doubt in the link between smoking and illness. Boeken testified in the late 1960’s that he acknowledged the surgeon general’s warning, but instead trusted the cigarette companies statements that cigarettes are safe, It was proven in court that Philip Morris purposely added addictive ingredients such as urea to increase addictive power. Boeken struggled with addiction, trying in multiple fashions to quit. He quit before his lung surgery, only to pick up the habit following the operation. A jury found Philip Morris liable for fraudulently concealing that cigarettes were addictive and carcinogenic, awarding Boeken $5.5 million in compensatory damages and assessed $3 billion in punitive damages, reduced to $100 million. Are the punitive damages reasonable?

Rule: The Supreme Court says that in awarding punitive damages, a court must consider three guideposts: The reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct, the ratio between the harm suffered and the award and the difference between the punitive award and any civil penalties used in similar cases. Later, this was expanded by another case to say that an award is grossly excessive it furthers no legitimate purpose and constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of property.

Application: At the trial it was demonstrated that by the mid-1950s, when the commercials in question were aired and Boeken started smoking, scientists accepted that smoking caused cancer; and the tobacco companies were deliberately attempting to convince the public that there was doubt about this. It was also demonstrated that tobacco was physically addictive and that Philip Morris added ingredients to make it more addictive. These directly led to the death of Richard Boeken and undoubtedly resulted in worse health and death for countless other similar individuals. To look at the guide posts above, the reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct is clear and extreme. They deliberately sought to mislead the general public to the degree of danger they were putting themselves in by smoking and further deliberately increased the addictiveness of their product despite the harm that it caused. Comparable civil penalties are unclear or at least not included in the scope of the information given here. The ratio between the harm suffered and the award is very large, which would seem to indicate that the punitive damages assessed are excessive. However, the purpose of punitive damages is to in some way punish the action or deter it in the future. Philip Morris would take roughly one week to earn $100 million in profit. As such, this is not grossly excessive as it furthers a legitimate purpose, the deterring effect attempted by punitive damages.