Lawyer predicts more costly smoking lawsuits against casinos

Source: Las Vegas Sun

At an anti-smoking conference in Las Vegas this week, the lawyer behind one of the largest settlements against a casino for allowing smoking said similarly expensive lawsuits are likely as casino workers across the country seek his advice in pursuing complaints against their employers.

“Workers are finding the courage to come forward and potentially submit claims in New Jersey, Nevada, West Virginia and Louisiana,” said Jeffrey Carton of Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz P.C., a New York law firm that pursues complex class-action cases.

Carton represented Vincent Rennich, a casino pit boss who won a $4.5 million settlement last year against the Tropicana in Atlantic City. Rennich, a nonsmoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 48 after 25 years at the Tropicana.

“I didn’t think I’d live to see 49, let alone 50,” Rennich said at the inaugural National Smokefree Gaming Symposium. For years, Rennich said he collected newspaper clippings of Atlantic City casino workers who had died young of lung or heart problems — complications he believed were linked to smoky casinos.



Read more: http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/may/12/lawyer-predicts-more-costly-smoking-lawsuits-again/

---

3-2-1. Amazes me how many DU'ers who support worker's rights in every way will say they need to find another job if they don't like smoking in casinos or bars endangering their health!

The Smoker's Rights people will soon be here with their "my body my choice" garbage, equating demands to smoke in a casino with abortion rights, etc. It's DU at it's most brilliant. :eyes:

No I didn't think so. Yes they should get another job. If they allow drunks they should allow smokers. These employees are more likely to get killed by the drunk that got served at the casino than smokers. But I do realize that smoking indoors anywhere is going the way of the Dodo. Maybe the casino's can have smoke free casino's and smoking casino's. Here in Ca we took that right away from bar owners. I just didn't want to disappoint.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicalnews/a/smokingcosts.htm

The report also finds that during 1997-2001 an estimated 438,000 premature deaths occur each year as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6089353/ns/health-addictions/t/alcohol-linked-us-deaths-year/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the study, estimated that 34,833 people in 2001 died from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits.
Another 40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use.

I would guess there are more drunks or (buzzed) drivers on the road 24/7. But I know this day is coming. (Unlike the End of the World May 21st 2011)
I give it another 5 or 10 years before all indoor facilities are non-smoking. Even in Vegas.

If I serve alcohol, the customer is the one who drinks it. I experience no direct effect from the customer drinking an alcoholic beverage. But if that same customer is sitting at my blackjack table chain smoking cigarettes while I deal, I am forced to breathe all of that smoke into my lungs. It is NOT the same.

As a former smoker who likes to go to a casino on occasion, I don't want to be subjected to someone else's smoke. I can only imagine how bad it is for those who work in the casino.

They can be very annoying. And they reek of booze and feel it's ok to touch you and lean on you. They are after all they're only drunk. They are the ones who usually have a cigarette burning in the ashtray as they light up another one. I know smoking is bad for people. And some casino's have smoke free tables. I know it doesn't get rid of all the smoke (invisible barriers) but it's a start. When I am at a casino, I usually try and sit on the end of the table, and I hold my cigarette behind me, and I never blow smoke toward the dealer no matter how bad I am losing.

Some can be, yeah.

But do these actions, unpleasant as they may be, contribute to emphysema and other smoking-related disorders in other customers and the people who serve them? No.

Therein lies the false equivalency.

By the way: a "non-smoking" area in a casino is like a "non-pissing" area in a swimming pool.

I'm totally stealing that.

before the un-reccers converge.

Lake Tahoe has a no-smoking casino. It is not as busy as the others, but I like to sit and play cards without getting a headache from cigarette smoke. The Indian casinos in Oregon allow smoking, and I have written to the two that I frequent asking them to ban smoking. Both of them have moved slowly in that direction, banning smoking from the cashier's cage area, the player's club area and the buffet. Both also have a smoke free slots area. I think one coordinated push by an anti-smoking group may succeed in banning it in all Oregon casinos.