Carter v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. [Olanda Carter]
(Personal Injury TN Cir Ct 1997 Dismissed) Citation: 2000 WL 52806 (Tenn.Ct.App. 11 Jan 2000)This suit was brought by Olanda Carter against R.J. Reynolds on June 25, 1997.
The plaintiff alleged that Olanda Carter suffered hypertension, emphysema and lung cancer as a result of smoking the defendant's cigarettes. Mr. Carter began smoking Camel cigarettes in 1946 at age 14, and ended up smoking a pack and a half per day. By 1977 he had been diagnosed with hypertension and emphysema, and in November 1996 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Mr. Carter quit smoking sometime around 1977. The plaintiff claimed negligence, strict liability, breach of express and implied warranties, negligent performance of a voluntary undertaking, fraud, misrepresentation, and conspiracy.
The case was heard in the Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennessee (No. 88570 T.D.) before the Honorable D'Army Bailey. The judge consolidated the case with four other tobacco lawsuits in the same court. On November 13, 1998, the judge severed the case from the other consolidated cases and granted the defendant's motion to dismiss on the basis that all the claims were based on purchases made more than ten years before, which went beyond the state's statute of repose. The plaintiff appealed.
The Court of Appeals of Tennessee (2000 WL 52806 (Tenn.Ct.App.)) affirmed the dismissal on January 11, 2000. The court held that a statute of repose eliminated both the remedy and the right to bring suit once the allotted time had passed. Hear the ten years began to run from the date the cigarettes were purchased or consumed. It did not matter that the plaintiff did not discover his lung cancer until later. Fraudulent concealment did not toll the statute of repose in regard to product liability actions, since the state legislature did not include such an exception. This was not a retroactive application of the statute of repose (passed in 1978), since the plaintiff had no vested right until either the action had accrued in 1996 or he brought suit in 1997. The Fourteenth Amendment requirement that similarly situated people be treated similarly did not apply to the minute similarities between asbestos and tobacco.