October 13, 2002 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The nation's largest smokeless tobacco company has settled a lawsuit by a former customer who contracted tongue cancer, marking what could be the first time a tobacco firm has agreed to pay an individual for injuries allegedly caused by its products.
UST Inc., holding company for U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., reached the unspecified "resolution" with Michael L. McMullin, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. A trial had been set to begin Oct. 21 in Jacksonville, Fla.
Cigarette manufacturers have never settled a case with an individual smoker to prevent a possible influx of new claims.
But analysts said Greenwich, Conn.-based UST did not face the same risk because there are fewer smokeless tobacco users, and because those users' chances of getting oral cancer are lower than smokers' chances of getting lung cancer and heart disease.
"If we believed there was a substantial pool of plaintiffs out there, then I think we might have come to a different decision," said UST Chairman and Chief Executive Vincent A. Gierer Jr.
No terms were disclosed; UST even avoided using the word "settlement" in a news release and a conference call with analysts. But Richard H. Verheij, UST's general counsel and executive vice president, said the "outcome provides for payment of attorneys' fees and other expenses."
According to court documents, McMullin started chewing tobacco in 1990, and became a regular user of UST brands Copenhagen and Skoal.
After McMullin was diagnosed with cancer in 1998, he underwent radiation treatments and surgery to remove a portion of his tongue. The 29-year-old has been cancer-free since, his attorney Norwood S. Wilner said.
Over the years, cigarette manufacturers have faced more than 1,000 individual claims, along with class-action lawsuits. But only about 50 claims have been filed against smokeless tobacco companies since the early 1950s, UST executives said. They said a few claims are pending against them in West Virginia.
The last trial of a smokeless case was in 1986, when a federal jury in Oklahoma City found UST not liable for the death of 19-year-old Sean Marsee.
Juries have awarded millions and sometimes billions of dollars to individual smokers. The largest such award, $28 billion, came Oct. 4 in California.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
