GALVESTON — A state district court judge Wednesday afternoon separated a malpractice claim against a doctor from a liability claim against the nation’s biggest tobacco companies.
The family of Veronica Crockett, who died of cancer at 52 in December 2002, has filed a lawsuit against tobacco companies, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.
Named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit is island doctor William Peterek, who was treating Crockett before her death. Peterek retired a year after Crockett died.
The case is the only one in Texas in which the tobacco industry is a defendant in a lawsuit involving an individual smoker.
Naming the companies as a co-defendant of the doctor could have allowed the plaintiffs to keep the case in state court and out of federal jurisdiction, where plaintiffs’ attorney Charles R. Houssiere III said many similar cases had been dismissed.
Those dismissals came under a law that bars lawsuits over serious health problems caused by smoking, but Houssiere said the state’s supreme court should address whether that included addiction, which is not covered by name in the law.
Attorney John Strawn, representing the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, argued to 10th State District Court Judge David Garner that the tobacco and medical lawsuits should be held separately, since they dealt with different issues.
Garner agreed and separated the two defendants into two separate lawsuits, meaning the case with two main defendants became two cases, each with one main defendant.
As a result of the ruling, tobacco companies would be able to request their lawsuits be moved to federal court.
