Source: Reuter

Flight attendant takes stand in landmark Fla tobacco trial

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuter) Six years after suing the tobacco industry
over secondhand cigarette smoke in airplanes, flight attendant
Norma Broin took the witness stand Monday but was allowed to
say little about her lung cancer or her experiences on smoky
passenger jets.

Broin's longawaited testimony as the lead plaintiff in the
landmark lawsuit, the first class action and first secondhand
smoke lawsuit against the tobacco industry to go to trial, was
punctuated by arguments over what she would be allowed to tell
the jury.

Tobacco lawyers, who wanted to bar her from the witness
stand entirely, raised continual objections to her answers and
at one point the jury was led from the room for 30 minutes while
the lawyers argued.

Broin's testimony came in the third month of the trial of
Broin vs. Philip Morris et al, a $5 billion lawsuit filed on
behalf of some 60,000 flight attendants who say they were made
sick by cigarette smoke while they worked on U.S. domestic
flights.

Broin, 42, testified for about 60 minutes but was allowed to
talk only in general terms about smoke in airplane passenger
cabins and her knowledge of the dangers of tobacco smoke.
A nonsmoker and mother of two who is married to a Marine,
she was permitted to say little about her 1989 diagnosis of lung
cancer and her membership in the Mormon Church, which forbids
smoking. Broin's cancer is in remission.
She testified that passenger cabins often were thick with
smoke before a 1990 smoking ban on domestic flights.
``There was an incredible amount of dense, dense cigarette
smoke,'' said Broin, an American Airlines flight attendant who
began her career in 1976. ``On occasion it would be so dense
with cigarette smoke, even our smoking passengers would
complain.''

Despite smoking and nonsmoking sections in passenger
cabins, she said, there was little separation when it came to
smoke in the air.

``It was ... a lot versus a lot more,'' Broin said. ``There
was never a place on the airline were you weren't subjected to
the cigarette smoke.''

The 1990 smoking ban dramatically changed her workplace,
Broin testified. She described the difference as ``night and
day, absolutely night and day.''
The arguments began when Broin's attorney, Stanley
Rosenblatt, asked her when she first became aware that
secondhand cigarette smoke could cause disease.
Public reliance on information disseminated by cigarette
makers on the possible dangers of cigarette smoke is a critical
issue in the trial. The plaintiffs maintain tobacco companies
deliberately misled the public through false advertising and
publications.

When the jury was escorted from the courtroom, tobacco
lawyers argued that Broin should not be allowed to testify about
how she might have relied on public information about the
possible dangers.

``It's just totally prejudicial to allow her to testify on
it in front of this jury,'' tobacco attorney High Whiting said.
Judge Robert Kaye determined that Broin could testify as to
what she saw or knew based on what she had read, but barred her
from saying anything about whether she relied on that
information to make decisions.
When the jury returned, Rosenblatt asked Broin what she knew
about secondhand smoke.
``Basically that it was very, very annoying. That it
wouldn't cause me any serious health problems,'' she said.
''That it was an irritant. It wasn't a serious threat.''
When Rosenblatt asked her if smoking had not been banned on
airplanes, whether she would be a flight attendant today, Broin
replied ``No,'' as tobacco lawyers rose to their feet to object.
``Don't sneak in answers,'' one industry lawyer said as
voices and tempers rose.
``Don't start with me, either of you,'' Kaye admonished the
attorneys.
Outside the courtroom, Rosenblatt said he was satisfied
that the jury was able to hear the important parts of Broin's
testimony.
``She's a nonsmoker. She has lung cancer,'' he said.


^REUTER@