#Smoker Never Relied on Big Tobacco’s “Inappropriate” Claims on Cigarettes Says Defense in Engle Trial

William Geraghty tells jurors that Phyllis Frazier smoked cigarettes because she enjoyed them, not out of a reliance on “wrong-headed” tobacco industry statements on smoking and health. Frazier, a decades-long smoker, suffered from COPD and underwent a bilateral lung transplant before she died in 2012. Her daughter Tina Russo is suing tobacco manufacturers R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, Geraghty’s client, claiming that they are responsible for her mother’s lung disease.