A Florida jury handed a $10 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds in Florida's Second Judicial Circuit on Tuesday.

The tobacco company faced claims from plaintiff Margaret Harris, alleging liability for her husband Richard's stomach cancer and ensuing pain, suffering and death. Although the jury decided the defendant was 70 percent at fault for the late Harris' ailments, attorney Richard Diaz said the plaintiff will still collect the full amount of the $10 million verdict because the jury found an intentional tort.

The jury gave $4 million in compensation and $6 million in punitive damages for a total of $10 million. Diaz said. But the final judgment is set to exceed $15 million with the addition of attorney fees and costs, the plaintiff made an offer to settle, but the defense refused, the Coral Gables litigator said.

None of the Jones Day attorneys retained by R.J. Reynolds — Emily Baker, Brad Harrison, Joyce McKinniss and James Browning — replied to requests for comment by press time. But in court pleadings, they argued that the plaintiff's request for admission was vague, and that the plaintiff's descriptions of R.J. Reynolds' products as “very addictive” and able to “change the brain” of consumers were overly ambiguous.

According to Diaz, Harris' husband was born in 1932 and began smoking when he was given free cigarettes at a drug store near his local Norfolk, Virginia, school. Prior to his death in 2016, “he smoked R.J. Reynolds products his entire life,” the attorney said.

“He was very poor, to the extent he lied at age 14 to get into the military,” Diaz said. “He joined the U.S. military. About four months later he was honorably discharged after they learned of his underage status.”

Diaz opted to amend the complaint to remove a wrongful death claim. He figured that because Harris' husband lived for 23 years after having his stomach removed due to cancer, a wrongful death charge would be vulnerable to attack by opposing counsel.

“We strategically decided to knock out the wrongful death and go with survival only, and it proved to be the right decision,” he said.

Diaz said the defense tried to portray Harris' husband as a “bad guy,” released from prison in 1985 following a 10-year prison sentence for issuing bad checks. And ironically, the testimony of former inmate Michael Capers might have been instrumental in swaying the jury.

“Richard spent the rest of his years going back to prisons doing ministry work and helping inmates reform as [he] had reformed,” Diaz said. Capers “was a stellar trial witness — he got the jury to understand despite Harris' earlier crimes and convictions, he was a truly reformed person. And today Michael Capers is a quite successful businessman, and he talked about how he credits his business success to the teachings he got from Richard Harris.”

Read the deposition: 

Diaz described the trial as “fast-paced,” and quipped it was perhaps the shortest trial for an Engle progeny case in Florida history.

“The case was done in six days — the last one I did was five months,” he said. “I've never tried one in less than three weeks.”

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