Tobacco Plaintiffs Ask V.I. Supreme Court to Unblock 13 Stalled Cases

Lawyers representing plaintiffs in 13 consolidated tobacco lawsuits have petitioned the Virgin Islands Supreme Court to take temporary control of the litigation and resolve legal questions that have prevented the cases from moving forward in Superior Court.

The request targets disputes involving R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Philip Morris and other defendants. According to the petition, the consolidated proceeding is divided into three groups. A, B and C, covering 13 individual cases. Attorneys say the urgency has grown because many plaintiffs are seriously ill. Three plaintiffs. Carlos Schuster, Hayden Barry and Elminio Soto, have died since filing their cases, leaving their matters caught in procedural deadlock.

Two Core Legal Questions

The plaintiffs want the Supreme Court to decide two issues. The first concerns whether Virgin Islands courts can exercise jurisdiction over Reynolds and Philip Morris on fraud and civil conspiracy claims. The second asks whether the territory's 1998 tobacco settlement with major cigarette manufacturers bars individual plaintiffs from recovering punitive damages for their own injuries.

The jurisdictional problem stems from Hayden Barry's lawsuit against Reynolds. In 2023, Superior Court dismissed Barry's fraud and conspiracy claims, finding he had not established sufficient Virgin Islands contacts with Reynolds to support jurisdiction. The court concluded Barry had not shown that Reynolds purposefully directed its conduct toward the territory.

The Superior Court later applied the same reasoning to three other Group A cases. However, Groups B and C developed differently: evidence on jurisdiction was admitted after full evidentiary hearings, creating inconsistency across the consolidated cases. Plaintiffs argue this procedural split has created a deadlock, the later cases cannot realistically progress without clarity on which jurisdictional standard applies.

The Settlement Question

The second dispute involves the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement signed by the Virgin Islands and major tobacco manufacturers. Reynolds argues the settlement permanently prevents individual plaintiffs from obtaining punitive damages. Plaintiffs counter that the agreement resolved claims pursued by governments on behalf of the public and did not extinguish individual smokers' rights to seek damages for personal injuries.

Plaintiffs point to a 2022 Virgin Islands Supreme Court decision, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company v. Gerald and Brown, in which juries awarded substantial punitive damages, $30 million in one case and $12.3 million in another. The Supreme Court reduced one award and ordered a new trial on compensatory damages but did not rule that punitive damages were categorically unavailable under the 1998 settlement. Plaintiffs note Reynolds did not raise the settlement agreement as a bar to punitive damages in that appeal.

Under Virgin Islands law, the Supreme Court may transfer a matter from another local court when doing so would promote the administration of justice. The court used that authority in 2024 in a legislative matter, noting such transfers should be "extraordinarily rare." Plaintiffs are asking the justices to use that mechanism to resolve the legal questions and then return the cases to Superior Court for further proceedings.