How Rebuttal's Use of Occam's Razor Cut Tobacco Companies for $36M Verdict in Cancer Trial

At trial, the simplest of competing theories—the one that relies on the fewest assumptions—often carries the most weight with a jury. Randy Rosenblum highlighted that principle, known as Occam’s Razor, and, with the help of a soda bottle as a demonstrative, helped deliver an eight-figure verdict against the country’s two biggest tobacco companies.

Robert Wallace was 50 when he died of lung cancer in 1992 after smoking for 35 years. His family sued R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, claiming that an industry-wide conspiracy to hide the dangers of cigarettes through much of the 20^th century, combined with deceptive marketing campaigns touting the safety of "light" and filtered cigarettes, hooked Wallace to nicotine and killed him.

The defense argued that Wallace believed lights and filters were safer cigarettes based on reports by the U.S. Surgeon General and other public health authorities, rather than tobacco marketing. That argument, the defense contended, was the epitome of the Occam’s Razor maxim.

But in his rebuttal closing, Dolan Dobrinsky & Rosenblum’s Randy Rosenblum, representing the Wallace family, argued Occam’s Razor actually cut against Reynolds, Philip Morris, and their marketing.

“Is it more likely that Robert Wallace believed lights and filters were safer because he read scientific journals, the Surgeon General’s reports, and statements by the public health authorities?” Rosenblum asked, noting there was no evidence such reports ever reached Wallace. “Or is it more likely that he believed that filters and lights were safer because that’s exactly what was being advertised by Philip Morris in their Parliament [cigarette] ads.

Rosenblum went further, noting Philip Morris had changed the name of its Parliament-brand cigarettes, which Wallace smoked, to Parliament Lights. However, Rosenblum reminded jurors, the company did not actually change the cigarette.

To drive home the point of what that change in messaging implied, Rosenblum held up a water bottle and asked jurors to assume for argument that on one day the bottle was a bottle of Coke and on the next day the same bottle’s name was changed to Diet Coke with no change to its formula.

“So what’s the message that’s being sent when I say to you I’m now calling it Diet Coke?” Rosenblum asked. “Well, it’s less fattening, it must have less calories, etc. It seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? So why is it that Philip Morris changes the name of a product—on a Monday it’s Parliament, and on a Tuesday, it’s Parliament Light—and what effect did it have on Robert Wallace?”

Jurors followed Rosenblum’s reasoning to a $36 million award against Reynolds and Philip Morris.