Welcome to another edition of the Lawyers Stink newsletter. This month we're going to briefly look at the recent  appeal of the largest punitive damage award in U.S. history.

In case you haven't heard, a Florida appeals court has overturned  a $145 billion verdict against the tobacco industry. Saying the award was issued by a "runaway jury" that had been "swept along in lemming-like fashion" by the arguments of lawyers representing Florida smokers, the appeals court gave the award the heave ho.

Third District Court of Appeal Judge David M. Gersten, who called the award "grossly excessive" and compared it to the gross national product of "several European countries," said the multibillion award violated a Florida law banning jury awards that would bankrupt corporations.

But the bigger story is that the court felt that individual tobacco cases were too different from one another to be lumped together into a class-action lawsuit.  This particular lawsuit had lumped approximately 700,000 smokers into the class action.

The court said its decision was in line with the findings of dozens of state and federal courts throughout the nation, which have either refused to grant class-action status or overruled lower courts that allowed class-action tobacco cases.

Tobacco industry officials hope this verdict will put an end to tobacco related litigation. Fat chance!

People are going to keep on smoking and keep getting sick. And lawyers are going to keep on suing the tobacco companies. But at least this one group of judges has seen through the smoke screen. Awarding billions upon billions to people (and their lawyers) who have ignored all of the repeated warnings about the potential health hazards of cigarette smoking is obscene.

Look, I don't like cigarettes. In fact, I detest the smell of smoke. But for crying our loud, until the government outlaws the manufacturing of tobacco products (which they're not about to do), they are legal products. If people decide to smoke, it's their decision. And if they get sick, it's their fault.

Let's look at the real facts and you can judge for yourself.

FACT #1: Studies linking cigarettes to lung cancer received wide attention in the early 1950's - almost fifty years ago.

FACT #2: Surgeon General warning labels began appearing on cigarette packs way back in 1966 - thirty six years ago. (FYI - That same year, as a fifth grader, I did a science project regarding the dangers of cigarette smoking and cancer).

FACT #3: Then in 1972, warning labels began appearing in every cigarette ad - thirty years ago.

FACT #4: Hundreds of thousands of public service announcements, newspaper and magazine articles, television and radio reports have exhaustibly covered the link between smoking and cancer.

Miami lawyer Stanley M. Rosenblatt, who stands to lose tens of billions of dollars in fees due to the reversal, initially attempted to bring this lawsuit on behalf of all American smokers - a class that would have amounted to tens of millions of people. The case was pared back by appeals courts to cover only smokers in Florida. Now old Stan gets a goose egg, at least for now.

Judge Gersten acknowledged the "emotional appeal" of the case, but said he would not "be swayed by emotions." Additionally, he stated that any damages or liability should be based on individual determinations about whether smoking caused a plaintiff's illness.

It would be improper, he said, to take the costs of treating smoking related illnesses for the six named plaintiffs in the case and then extrapolate a number to compensate the 700,000 class members.

"The fate of an entire industry," Gersten wrote, "and of close to a million Florida residents, cannot rest upon such a fundamentally unfair proceeding."

The lawyers may have been knocked to the canvass with this recent ruling, but don't you dare count them out for the count. After all, where there's smoke - there's lawyers.