Thousands of Florida residents are suing Big Tobacco in the wake of a Florida court ruling that eased the way for individual negligence lawsuits, even as it dismissed a class-action lawsuit against tobacco firms.

Bloomberg News reported Jan. 10 that at least 1,700 individual lawsuits have been filed by Florida smokers aganst Philip Morris alone, and some expect the total number of cases to top 10,000 before this week's filing deadline.

In July 2006, the Florida Supreme Court threw out a $145-billion verdict in a class-action suit against the industry, but upheld a jury's finding that tobacco companies were negligent and sold defective products, that nicotine is addictive, and that smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. Lawyers are now using that ruling in the individual cases.

"The industry is in a bad position in Florida," said attorney Robert Kelley of Fort Lauderdale. "There are a lot of really good trial lawyers filing these cases."

"These people are evil people," said attorney Willie Gary, who is representing about 500 plaintiffs, referring to the tobacco industry. "They hurt a lot of people and they knew what they were doing."