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It's Monday, July 21, 2014 from Slate. It's the gist on Mike Peska. Huge settlement in Florida.

Have you heard a woman whose husband died of smoking won a monster payout?

Cigarette maker RJ Reynolds was ordered by a Florida jury to compensate the widow of a

smoker to the tune of $23 billion. Cynthia Robinson is now the 15th richest American. Cynthia

Robinson is richer than Mark Zuckerberg, wealthier than Rupert Murdoch and George Soros.

So how did she earn her $23 billion? Her husband smoked. Okay, I don't want to be insensitive.

I don't want to be inaccurate because everyone knows the amount is going to be lowered much,

much lower. Turns out Cynthia Robinson was part of a suit many years ago and the jury, the Florida

jury in that case awarded $145 billion. So yeah, they awarded the participants in this class

action suit, something like three times the nominal GDP of Tunisia. But of course, they didn't really

award them that or the members of the class action didn't really get that money. But you did have

a sympathetic jury given a giant compensation claim. And so the courts ruled that all the people

who sued had to be broken up and you couldn't get that original amount of money. And here,

Cynthia Robinson really did win $16 million in compensatory damages and most people think she's

going to be able to keep that sort of money. The guideline is you shouldn't give more than nine

times that amount in punitive damages. But if you want to, you can. And this Florida jury wanted to,

so they come up with $23 billion. Her lawyer later said she thought it was $23 million and her

lawyer said, they just said billion. And Cynthia Robinson said we were thrilled when they said million.

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