MIAMI — Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg granted a new trial in the case of former American Airlines flight attendant Suzette Janoff, who sued Philip Morris, Lorillard Tobacco, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson, claiming that secondhand smoke she inhaled while working aboard airliners caused her chronic sinusitis. Previous case resulted in a tobacco victory. Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg stated that granting a new trial is a “warning to lawyers who argue positions to the court that they knew or should have known was contrary to the law.”
Rothenberg rebuked the tobacco attorneys for misleading her on the law regarding the admissibility of authoritative texts into evidence.
“These same lawyers had made similar arguments to an experienced civil judge, the Hon. Fredricka Smith, prior to the trial before the court and were not permitted to do that which they argued to this court was permissible,” wrote Rothenberg. Smith is a judge in the civil division of Miami-Dade Circuit Court. “Lawyers should be cautioned that when they invite error, they do so at their own peril.”.
(via Miami Daily Business Review)
2 responses so far ↓
judge william f. chinnock // Nov 8, 2003 at 4:54 am
NOTICE: “NO SMOKING AROUND CHILDREN”
The law review article entitled “No Smoking around Children,” by Ohio Judge William F. Chinnock, has just been published in the University of Arizona Law Review (Vol. 45, No. 3, Nov. 2003). It’s subtitle is “The Family Courts’ Mandatory Duty to Restrain Parents and Other Persons from Smoking around Children.”
Its major points:
1. “The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Smoking tobacco causes and aggravates serious diseases in smokers, and quite often, leads to death. Smoking kills almost three times as many smokers each week in the United States as were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.”
2. “Secondhand smoke causes and aggravates serious diseases in non-smoking adults and children. Every three weeks secondhand cigarette smoke kills about the same number of non-smokers in the United States as were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.”
3. “Children are especially susceptible to diseases caused by secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke is a real and substantial danger to the health of children.”
4. “Children comprise the most abused segment of society in the world. Fortunately, the children of America are protected by our unrivaled, centuries-old system of juvenile justice.”
5. “The clear and convincing evidence of manifold harm from secondhand smoke to children is consistent, robust, and irrefutable. This evidence gives rise to a duty upon family courts, the legislature, and administrative agencies to take action to reduce children’s compelled exposure to tobacco smoke.”
6. “Existing American law requires a family court, on its own initiative and regardless of the health of the child, to consider the danger of secondhand smoke to children as a significant, and possibly determinative (where child has health problems), factor in determining issues of visitation and custody. Family courts have a further duty to protect all children under their care by issuing court orders restraining anyone from smoking in their presence as a matter of standard practice.”
Gary Newbold // May 5, 2004 at 8:39 am
Please note who submitted this.
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