{"id":4592,"date":"2016-11-17T02:53:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T10:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/deadlocked-jury-in-familys-lawsuit-against-tobacco-company\/"},"modified":"2016-11-17T02:53:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T10:53:07","slug":"deadlocked-jury-in-familys-lawsuit-against-tobacco-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/deadlocked-jury-in-familys-lawsuit-against-tobacco-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadlocked jury in family&#8217;s lawsuit against tobacco company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BETHEL \u2014 <\/strong>After more than three weeks, a Bethel Superior Court jury cannot decide whether or not a tobacco company misled a Pilot Station man about the harmful effects of smoking.<\/p>\n<p>KYUK-AM reported jury foreman Robert Sundown said jurors deadlocked over whether Philip Morris USA was at fault for the death of Benjamin Frances.<\/p>\n<p>Francis died of lung cancer at age 52 in 2004 after a long history of smoking Marlboro Lights.<\/p>\n<p>Francis\u2019 common-law wife, Dolores Hunter, and children sued Philip Morris USA and its parent company Altria Group for product liability, fraud, and the wrongful death of Francis.<\/p>\n<p>Sundown said some jurors wanted more testimony on why Francis chose to smoke Marlboro Lights before they made a decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou feel for the parties involved, both for Ms. Hunter and Philip Morris in terms of the time and effort and energy they all expended into this case,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you can see that in both attorneys and their passion for arguing in the case, but in the end you have to come to some sort of message. In answering those questions, you have to be able to answer the questions honestly, and we just weren\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys for Philip Morris USA did not respond for requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Don Bauermeister of Washington represented the Francis estate and said he has a week to file for a retrial based on the family\u2019s decision. He said cases like the lawsuit are important because they question the practices of tobacco companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether the discussion is good or bad,\u201d Bauermeister said, \u201cthey generate discussion about the dangers of tobacco, the misinformation that\u2019s been shared about tobacco, and the need for people to rethink how dangerous tobacco is and what they\u2019ve been told. Because for many years they were not told the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was the second time Hunter\u2019s case has gone to trial. The first trial occurred in 2011 and the company was found not liable but that ruling was reversed by a higher court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BETHEL \u2014 After more than three weeks, a Bethel Superior Court jury cannot decide whether or not a tobacco company misled a Pilot Station man about the harmful effects of smoking. KYUK-AM reported jury foreman Robert Sundown said jurors deadlocked over whether Philip Morris USA was at fault for the death of Benjamin Frances. Francis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4592"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}