Lorillard Hedge Fund #2 Buys Sky e-cigs

Stop Smoking Greenbsboro - Lorillard Tobacco has closed on a deal to buy Skycig, a British e-cigarette

maker, for $49 million according to the Los Angeles Times.  The North Carolina-based tobacco giant has expanded more aggressively into the newest nicotine delivery trend than its larger rivals. Last year Lorillard paid $135 million to buy Blu eCigs.

“It has been Lorillard's mission to be first and best in the electronic cigarette category,” Chief Executive Murray Kessler said in a news release. “Our mission is now a global one.”

While from a pure business perspective, this makes total since.  Tower Records wasn't creative enough to solve their mp3 problem.  Big Tobacco has a viable hedge fund in the e-cigarette market.  Unfortunately, when you consider who is now in charge of manufacturing, advertising and marketing and stack that on the fact that Big Tobacco has functioned without any real ethics since the beginning, all that's really happened here is the music changed, but we're still dancing with the Devil.  

Punitive damages upheld in Miami-Dade County smoker case

FROM:  The News Service of Florida  Pointing to decades of efforts by the tobacco industry to mislead the public, a state appeals court Wednesday upheld a $25 million punitive-damages award against Lorillard Tobacco Co.  [FYI:  Lorillard, also owns Blu e-Cigarettes]

The 3rd District Court of Appeal also said Lorillard should pay $8 million in compensatory damages to Dorothy Alexander, whose husband, Coleman, started smoking cigarettes while in sixth grade and died at age 59.

The Miami-Dade County case is part of a wave of lawsuits against the tobacco industry stemming from a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision. The lawsuits, known in the legal world as “Engle progeny” cases, have been bolstered by parts of the Supreme Court decision that established critical findings about the health dangers of smoking and misrepresentation by cigarette makers.

In the Alexander case, Lorillard argued, in part, that the $25 million in punitive damages was unconstitutionally excessive.

But a three-judge panel flatly rejected the arguments. “The plaintiff provided more than sufficient evidence to show Lorillard’s conduct, both individually and as a member of the tobacco industry, of continuous, repeated, and aggressive attempts to discredit the scientific research revealing the harmful and addictive nature of cigarettes and to cast doubt on the validity of the scientific research by mounting advertising and public relations campaigns,” the ruling said.

“The plaintiff similarly provided evidence of more than a half-century of Lorillard’s reckless disregard of the scientific findings and of its indifference to the potential physical harm to consumers caused by its product for its own purely economic gain.”