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Tampa jury awards $15 million to widow in tobacco lawsuit

 
Published April 24, 2017

TAMPA — A Tampa jury has awarded $15 million in damages to the widow of a man who died from illnesses related to years of cigarette smoking.

After a four-week trial, the jury said Mary Lima, 83, is entitled to $3 million in compensatory damages from the loss of her husband, Johnny Lima. The jury also ordered $12 million in punitive damages against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Lima, a grocer and restaurateur, began smoking in the 1940s, inhaling up to two packs a day for more than 40 years. He died in 1993 at age 60.

The case, filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court, stemmed from a decades-old class-action suit, Engle v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.