Up in Smoke

So attached to cigarettes was John Galbraith, 69, that even while hospitalized with lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema, he would slip off his oxygen mask to sneak a smoke. Before death ended his 51-year, three-pack-a-day habit in 1982, Galbraith had filed a $1 million product-liability suit against R.J. Reynolds, contending that the company that marketed the Winstons and Camels he puffed so prodigiously fueled his addiction and thus killed him. But last week a jury in Santa Barbara, Calif., voted 9 to 3 that Galbraith's lawyer Melvin Belli had not proved that smoking necessarily caused Galbraith's death or that he was a tobacco addict. The panel of eleven nonsmokers and one smoker agreed with Reynolds' attorney Thomas Workman that Galbraith "smoked because he loved it. He knew the risks involved and took them."

The verdict was a major victory for Reynolds and for the tobacco industry as a whole, which currently faces more than 40 similar liability suits. Lawyer Belli plans an appeal, based on Judge Bruce Dodds' refusal to admit important evidence about the Surgeon General's reports on the hazards of smoking.