Smoker's wrongful death trial nears end

Plaintiff attorney urges jury to
send message to tobacco industry

May 2, 1997
Web posted at: 5:13 p.m. EDT (2113 GMT)

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (CNN) -- R.J. Reynolds should be sent a message that its products killed Jean Connor, and it should be held responsible for her lung cancer and death, an attorney for her family told a jury Friday.

"Jean Connor died of lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking," Norwood "Woody" Wilner said in his closing argument of the wrongful death case. "If she hadn't smoked Reynolds' products she would not have died of lung cancer."

C L O S I N G A R G U M E N T S

Paul Christ

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Norwood "Woody" Wilner

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R.J. Reynolds attorney Paul Crist, in his closing statement, retorted that the case "is not about messages at all."

"This case is about Jean Connor and her decisions. This case is about her decision that she made throughout her life ... despite a drumbeat of anti smoking messages," Crist told the jury.

The six-member panel was expected to get the case later in the day.

During the trial, RJR contended that Mrs. Connor chose to smoke and was not addicted because she was able to quit in 1993, two months before she was diagnosed with cancer.

Lawyers for the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company said Mrs. Connor enjoyed smoking and kept doing it of her own will.

They also attempted to show there was no proof her cancer was the result of heavy smoking, and they put on expert witnesses who claimed there was no proven link between lung cancer and smoking.

Wilner told the one-man, five-woman panel that Connor accepted her responsibility for the lung cancer that killed her in October 1995, at age 49. But he said Reynolds had never owned up to its responsibility.

"Reynolds should not be able to say 'it's all your fault, it's all your fault. We don't have any responsibility,"' he said.

Mrs. Connor's two sons and a daughter want the jurors to award actual and punitive damages in "the multiple millions."

Correspondent Robert Vito and Reuters contributed to this report.

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RJR Nabisco Shareholder--Direct - R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company information
Brooke Group, Ltd. Home Page - Brooke Group is a holding company which owns Liggett Group Inc.

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Smoker's wrongful death trial nears end