Florida Jury Awards $23.6 Billion to Widow of Michael Johnson in Smoking Lawsuit Against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company … What Happened to Personal Responsibility?

Sorry, I am no fan of the cigarette industry, but I am one of personal responsibility. I generally cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke and don’t understand why anyone even uses them, but this jury verdict is absurd and needs to be overturned by appeal.

An Escambia County, Florida jury awarded the widow of of a 36 year old man who died of lung cancer $23.6 million. The verdict included more than $16 million in compensatory damages. Cynthia Robinson claimed that smoking killed her husband, Michael Johnson, in 1996 at the age of 36 after he had smoked from the age of 13. The widow stated that R.J. Reynolds was negligent in not informing him that nicotine is addictive and smoking can cause lung cancer. The lawyer for the plaintiff’s said that because of the juror’s age, he had to shoe how the tobacco industry presented its product before the public awareness campaigns on tobacco risks and dangers in the 1990′s. HUH? Robinson’s attorneys, Christopher Chestnut also went on to say, “The jury wanted to send a statement that tobacco cannot continue to lie to the American people and the American government about the addictiveness of and the deadly chemicals in their cigarettes.” HUH?

A Florida jury awarded a widow $23.6 billion in punitive damages in her lawsuit against tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, her lawyer said.

Cynthia Robinson claimed that smoking killed her husband, Michael Johnson, in 1996. She argued R.J. Reynolds was negligent in not informing him that nicotine is addictive and smoking can cause lung cancer. Johnson started smoking when he was 13 and died of lung cancer when he was 36.

The jury award Friday evening is “courageous,” said Robinson’s lawyer, Christopher Chestnut.

“If anyone saw the documents that this jury saw, I believe that person would have awarded a similar or greater verdict amount,” he said.

The Escambia County trial took four weeks and the jury deliberated for 15 hours, according to the Pensacola News Journal. The verdict included more than $16 million in compensatory damages, the newspaper said.

Chestnut said five of the six jurors who heard the case were 45 or younger, which meant he had to show them how the tobacco industry presented its product before the public awareness campaigns on tobacco risks and dangers in the 1990s, he said.

Okay, let’s do the math for the obviously challenged Florida jury. I guess this one might be as clueless as the Florida jury that deliberated in the Casey Anthony murder case. For 50 years we have been warned that smoking is hazardous to our health, where was Michael Johnson during that time?

FIRST … WHO DOES NOT KNOW THAT CIGARETTES ARE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH AND CAUSE LUNG CANCER?

United States was the first nation to require a health warning on cigarette packages.

Now for the numbers.

1. Michael Johnson died in 1996 at the age of 36 from lung cancer.
2. This means the deceased would have been born in 1960.
3. Johnson would have begun smoking in 1973 as the story above states he began smoking at the age of 13.
4. WHAT PARENT ALLOWS THEIR CHILD TO SMOKE AT THE AGE OF 13?
5. All 50 states bad laws banning sales to minors by 1950. The most common age of restriction for cigarettes and tobacco products today applies to persons under the age of 18. In an effort to ensure stricter enforcement 11 states have lowered the age of restriction from 21 to 15 (Tobacco Merchants Association, 1971: 1-2).
6. The smoking age was 18 meaning for 5 years the decease was breaking the law and smoking as a minor. Who’s fault was that?
7. In 2006 Florida state Supreme Court tossed out a $145 billion class-action verdict. That ruling also said smokers and their families need only prove addiction and that smoking caused their illnesses or deaths.
8. In 2008 on behalf of her late husband, Michael Johnson Sr.
9. 2014 a Florida jury awards $23.6 billion in punitive damages in a lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

Now for some more relevant numbers.

• On June 12, 1957, Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney declared it the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service that the evidence pointed to a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
• The 1964 report on smoking and health had an impact on public attitudes and policy. A Gallup Survey conducted in 1958 found that only 44 percent of Americans believed smoking caused cancer, while 78 percent believed so by 1968. In the course of a decade, it had become common knowledge that smoking damaged health, and mounting evidence of health risks gave Terry’s 1964 report public resonance.
• The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 (Public Law 89–92) required that the warning “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health” be placed in small print on one of the side panels of each cigarette package. The act prohibited additional labeling requirements at the federal, state, or local levels.
• In June 1967 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its first report to Congress recommending that the warning label be changed to “Warning: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Health and May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Diseases.”
• In 1969 Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act (Public Law 91–222), which prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio and required that each cigarette package contain the label “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health.”
• In 1981 Congress enacted the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act of 1984 (Public Law 98–474), which required four specific health warnings on all cigarette packages and advertisements:SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy.
      SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
      SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking by Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.
      SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.

I am of the belief that if cigarette tobacco is so bad, then make them illegal to use. Otherwise, it is just a way of the local, state and federal government making tax money off of lung cancer. It is an individual’s choice to smoke. Sorry folks, unless you were born prior to 1965 or your terminal lung cancer occurred prior to then, you have no one to blame but yourself. For nearly 50 years there have been warning labels on cigarette packages.

EXACTLY HOW MANY WARNINGS DOES ONE NEED BEFORE THEY REALIZE THAT SOMETHING IS HAZARDOUS TO THEIR HEALTH?

AG Eric Holder Bashes Sarah Palin on ABC’s ‘This Week’ Says … “She Wasn’t Particularly Good VP Candidate, She’s an Even Worse Judge of Who to Impeach”

Hmm, one might say Eric Holder isn’t a particularly good Attorney General and an even worse judge of what scandals should be prosecuted …

Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s attorney general took to ABC’s ‘This Week’ to bash Sarah Palin stating, “She wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She’s an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.” Really? With all the scandals that Holder could be prosecuting and getting to the bottom of, he is bashing Palin? Where is Holder on Benghazi-gate, Fast & Furious and IRS-gate? Where is Eric Holder in enforcing US immigration laws? HOLDER IS AWOL. Holder is the most political, partisan attorney general ever. This political hack will do nothing to investigate an out of control Obama administration because his allegiances lie with Obama, not America and the US Constitution. While we are at it, Eric Holder should be impeached as well. Make it a two-fer.

Administration efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example, have failed. Asked about calls by Sarah Palin to impeach Obama over the administration’s immigration policies, Holder said: “She wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She’s an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.”

Holder similarly dismissed calls for himself to be impeached for declining to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal. Holder insisted that a special prosecutor isn’t necessary, with “career people” and FBI agents “doing a good, professional job” investigating the matter.

As per Breitbart, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other senior “establishment” Republicans have dismissed Palin’s calls and instead have opted to file a lawsuit against Obama’s executive overreach. Also, House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte, (R-VA), said on “This Week” that he won’t push for the impeachment of President Obama, despite recent calls by some Republicans. Of course the GOP won’t, they are gutless.

“We are not working on or drawing up articles of impeachment,” Goodlatte told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” Sunday. “The Constitution is very clear as to what constitutes grounds for impeachment of the President of the United States. He has not committed the kind of criminal acts that call for that.”

WANNA BET!!!

Eric Holder is hardly a credible source to talk about a poor candidate for a job or being able to judge anyone. Holder has been a disaster as AG.

Rep. Gowdy Questions AG Holder About Duty to Faithfully Execute the Law

One Year After George Zimmerman Acquittal in Death of Trayvon Martin, The Defense’s ‘Train Wreck’ Star Witness Rachel Jeantel Speaks Out

It was one year ago on July 13, 2013 that George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin and the defense’s star witness, let’s rephrase that, train wreck witness Rachel Jeantel speaks out. In an interview with CNN, Jeantel discusses her regrets that she could have said things and acted differently while on the witness stand. She played the victim and blamed the jury for not taking her seriously. Jeantel said, “they judge how they talk, how they look, how they dress.” Jeantel was upset because she felt like she was being judged. ARE YOU KIDDING? Rachel dear, you were a witness in a murder trial. It was the jury’s job to determine whether you were telling the truth and your combative actions and the testimony that Martin told her he was being chased by a “creepy-ass cracker”  was judged. Rachel, here is a free life lesson … we are all judged by our actions every day.

Jeantel was the prosecution’s star witness, yet her testimony was a combative, profanity-laced “train wreck” that likely contributed to Zimmerman’s acquittal.

Jeantel’s curt, colloquial language prompted attorneys to ask her to speak up and repeat herself time and again during the trial, eventually eliciting an exasperated, “Are you listening?” from Jeantel.

She told CNN this week that she wishes she had “acted different” on the witness stand.

We do hope that the experiences that Rachel Jeantel went through during the Zimmerman trial does turn her life around and makes her a better person. As stated in the video above, no one knew it at the time of her testimony, but “she was barely able to read and write at the level of a third grader. Whose fault is that exactly? We can blame public school and Rachel Jeantel as she resisted any efforts of tutoring because it took too long.  However, it appears that she is trying to get her life together and has graduated high school. Good for her!

What happened to Rachel Jeantel was not a matter of a jury falsely judging a book by it’s cover. In 2013 when she took the witness stand Rachel’s book was her cover, no more, no less. Was she smart, no. Was she well versed, not on your life.

‘Creepy a** cracker is following me’

Rachel Jeantel Can’t Read Letter She ‘Wrote’ About Shooting: ‘I don’t read cursive’

Trayvon Trainwreck – Star Prosecuting Witness Implodes on the Stand – Rachel Jeantel

That is obvious, otherwise she would not have felt the need to change and better herself. People criticized her for her actions and the way she talked because they were horrified by your actions and speech that you thought nothing of. Personally, I blamed at the time the prosecutors more than I did Jeantel because I could never have imagined anyone thinking that she would be a good witness. More so, did they do any coaching?

We can only hope that something good comes from the George Zimmerman murder trail and maybe that is that Rachel Jeantel woke up, grew up and got her life on track.

Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan Demands IRS Explain the Lois Lerner Lost Emails

HOW WILL THE IRS REACT TO BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A FEDERAL DEMAND?

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington has ordered the IRS to explain under oath how former IRS employee Lois Lerner’s emails went missing. Do you mean a federal judge will not except the excuse, that the dog ate my hard drive? Imagine that, Lois Lerner warned IRS employee’s what they put in their emails and then her’s miraculously disappeared. Yup, not a smidgen of corruption here.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.

Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.

Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.

O.J. Simpson: 20 Years Since the Murders of Nicole Brown Simpson & Ron Goldman… After Midnight on the Morning of June 13, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were Found Murdered Outside her Home in Los Angeles, CA

It is hard to believe it has been 20 years since the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The two were found brutally murdered outside of her home in Los Angeles, CA.

Long after the so-called “not guilty” verdict of O J Simpson in the horrific murders of  Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman so many questions still remain.  There was a mountain of evidence, including DNA, that should have made this a slam dunk case. However, in what was probably the greatest example ever of jury nullification, a jury acquitted OJ Simpson in the double murders. Of course, common sense and rational people knew then and know now much different. The murder trial of O.J Simpson was dubbed, The Trial of the Century. But sadly, instead of the trial being about finding justice for Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, for their brutal and savage murders, the Defense ‘Dream Team’ sought to make the trial about race and pulled the race card out from the bottom of the deck. The trial divided America. The verdict was a travesty of justice and for all those involved in that travesty, and applauded that travesty … God help you.

Remember Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murdered 6/12/94

To many, particularly in minority communities,  the trial of Orenthal James Simpson became not so much a determination of his guilt or innocence of murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether or not a black man could find justice in a legal system designed by and largely administered by whites. To others, many of whom were white, the key question was whether a mostly minority jury would convict a black celebrity regardless of the weight of evidence against him.

Ron Goldman’s father: Son’s death is ‘like yesterday’

AP PHOTOS: Memorable images from OJ Simpson case.

NBC News Today:

“It’s like yesterday,” said Fred Goldman on TODAY Wednesday. His son, Ron Goldman, was murdered along with Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson. “The loss is exactly the same. Nothing has changed.”

Years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders, questions remain about what happened 20 years ago this month and how an apparently strong case with “a mountain of DNA evidence” failed result in a conviction.

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found murdered outside her home in Los Angeles. Evidence on the scene led police to suspect O.J. Simpson of the murders, and Simpson’s lawyers arranged for him to turn himself in on the morning of June 17.

Soon after Simpson failed to appear at the allotted time, police issued an all-points bulletin. Early that evening, a bizarre low-speed chase ensued, with up to 20 police cars pursuing Simpson in his white Bronco, driven by his friend Al Cowlings, while media helicopters televised the chase nationwide. The chase ended at Simpson’s house, where he eventually surrendered peacefully.

Simpson’s trial on two counts of murder began in January 1995 and ended with his acquittal more than eight months later.

Most people focus on the cute tag line by the late defense attorney Johnny Cochran when O.J Simpson was asked to put on the bloody gloves, “If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit”.  There is a general rule withing the legal industry that a lawyer is never to ask a question they do not already know the answer to. Assistant DA Darden blew this one.

However, folks may want to better remember where that bloody golf came from, the gruesome crime scene where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were stabbed to death. Where Nicole’s head was nearly severed from her body. Take a good look at that bloody glove, doesn’t seem so cute with “if it doesn’t fit” does it? What doesn’t fit is that an obviously guilty individual was set free.  WARNING – DISTURBING AND GRAPHIC PHOTOS: pics here of crime scene.

16 months after the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, a jury found there was not enough evidence against O.J. Simpson to convict him. But there was plenty of evidence the jury didn’t see.

• Nicole’s best friend Kris Jenner said Nicole told her just weeks before the murders, “He’s gonna kill me, and he’s gonna get away with it.”
• Two other key witnesses told police they saw O.J. Simpson soon after the killings. Jill Shively said, “All of a sudden, a white car comes flying north on Bundy, and I barely miss him. It was O.J. Simpson.” But Shively never testified because she sold her story to the press.
• Jurors never heard, either, from Skip Junis, who said he saw the former football star and actor at the airport later that night. “He was carrying this little, cheap gym bag, and was pulling things out and dumping ‘em in the trash can,” he said.
• There was also a suicide note, read by Simpson’s close friend Robert Kardashian. It was never heard in court. Neither did 911 recordings from the police’s famous low-speed chase of the white Bronco on Los Angeles highways.