A US court has ordered the country's second largest cigarette company to pay $23.6 billion to the family of the smoker who died of lung cancer. The tobacco company was hit with the punitive fine in addition to $16.8 million in compensatory damages. Cynthia Robinson, the wife of the tobacco victim, filed a lawsuit against the firm in 2008, seeking compensation for her husband's death in 1996. During the four-week trial, lawyers for Ms. Robinson argued that RJ Reynolds was negligent in informing smokers of the dangers of consuming tobacco. The lawyers insisted that such negligence caused her husband Michael Johnson lung cancer from smoking after becoming addicted. A spokesman for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company made a comment that the verdict was “grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law.”
