Case Title: Prentice v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Citation: 

Docket Number: SC20-291

State: florida

Court: Florida Supreme Court

Date: 2022-03-17T00:00:00Z

Document:
Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC20-291 
____________ 
 
LINDA PRENTICE, etc., 
Petitioner,  
 
vs. 
 
R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY, 
Respondent. 
 
March 17, 2022 
 
MUÑIZ, J. 
 
As we will soon explain, this is an “Engle progeny” case, where 
an injured smoker sues a tobacco company for fraudulent 
concealment, conspiracy, and other tortious conduct.  Today we 
resolve a district court conflict over what proof is required to prevail 
on the reliance element of those fraudulent concealment and 
conspiracy claims—a disagreement that has led to divergent jury 
instructions in Engle progeny cases.1  We hold that an Engle 
progeny plaintiff must prove reliance on a statement that was made 
 
 
1.  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const. 
 
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by an Engle defendant (for a concealment claim) or co-conspirator 
(for a conspiracy claim) and that concealed or omitted material 
information about the health effects or addictiveness of smoking 
cigarettes. 
I.  
John Price got chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after 
smoking multiple packs of R.J. Reynolds cigarettes a day for most 
of his adult life.  Price sued RJR and asserted claims for strict 
liability, negligence, fraudulent concealment, and conspiracy to 
fraudulently conceal.  After Price’s death from COPD, Linda Prentice 
maintained the lawsuit as a wrongful death action. 
Price and Prentice’s lawsuit traces to 1994, when injured 
smokers filed a class action seeking damages from RJR, the other 
major domestic tobacco companies, and affiliated organizations for 
smoking-related illnesses.  Our Court prospectively decertified the 
class in Engle v. Liggett Group, Inc. (Engle III), 945 So. 2d 1246 (Fla. 
2006).  At the time of our decision in Engle III, the Engle trial court 
had completed Phases I and II of the case’s three planned phases.  
The reader can disregard Phase II, which has no relevance to our 
decision today. 
 
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We held in Engle III that, notwithstanding our decision to 
decertify the class, individual class members like Price could choose 
to bring individual actions in which certain factual findings from 
Phase I of Engle would be given “res judicata effect.”  Engle III, 945 
So. 2d at 1277.  Those findings have come to be known as the 
“approved Phase I findings.”  The individual class member lawsuits, 
of which there have been thousands, are usually referred to as 
“Engle progeny” cases. 
The point of an Engle progeny case is to litigate the plaintiff-
specific reliance, causation, and damages issues that were left 
unaddressed by the Phase I jury.  That jury “did not determine 
whether the defendants were liable to anyone.”  Id. at 1263.  
Instead, the Phase I findings related “exclusively to the defendants’ 
conduct and the general health effects of smoking.”  Id. at 1256; see 
also id. at 1276-77 (listing the approved Phase I findings).  
An Engle progeny plaintiff must first prove membership in the 
Engle class—a class consisting of Florida residents who developed a 
qualifying smoking-related illness by November 21, 1996, and 
whose illness was caused by an addiction to cigarettes containing 
nicotine.  Upon successfully proving class membership, the plaintiff 
 
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is entitled to use the approved Phase I findings to establish the 
conduct elements of her Engle claims.  See Engle III; Philip Morris 
USA, Inc. v. Douglas, 110 So. 3d 419 (Fla. 2013) (clarifying how the 
approved Phase I findings were to be used in Engle progeny cases). 
In this case, the jury first found that Price was a member of 
the Engle class.  The jury then found in Prentice’s favor on her 
claims for strict liability, negligence, and concealment conspiracy, 
but not for fraudulent concealment.  The jury awarded Prentice 
$6.4 million in compensatory damages and apportioned 60% of the 
fault for Price’s death to Price and 40% to RJR.  But because the 
jury found in Prentice’s favor on concealment conspiracy (an 
intentional tort), the judgment was not reduced to reflect Price’s 
comparative fault.  See Schoeff v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 232 
So. 3d 294, 305 (Fla. 2017).  RJR appealed. 
The First District’s decision in the appeal focused on RJR’s 
challenge to the jury instruction on Prentice’s concealment 
conspiracy claim.  By way of background, the approved Phase I 
findings pertinent to that claim were (1) “that the [Engle] defendants 
concealed or omitted material information not otherwise known or 
available knowing that the material was false or misleading or failed 
 
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to disclose a material fact concerning the health effects or addictive 
nature of smoking cigarettes or both;” and (2) “that the defendants 
agreed to conceal or omit information regarding the health effects of 
cigarettes or their addictive nature with the intention that smokers 
and the public would rely on this information to their detriment.”  
Engle III, 945 So. 2d at 1257 n.4. 
In addition to the approved Phase I findings, Prentice 
presented evidence that the  
major tobacco companies in the United States, including 
RJR, made fraudulent statements about the hazards of 
smoking as early as December 4, 1953.  Over a fifty-year 
period, the tobacco companies concealed information 
about the addictive nature of nicotine and the harmful 
effects of smoking while engaging in marketing efforts to 
encourage people to smoke. 
 
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Prentice, 290 So. 3d 963, 965 (Fla. 1st 
DCA 2019). 
Although the approved Phase I findings sufficed to establish 
the conduct elements of her concealment claims, it remained for 
Prentice to prove the other elements of the claims, including the 
reliance element.  As to the reliance element of her conspiracy 
claim, RJR had sought an instruction telling the jury that it must 
determine “whether Mr. Price reasonably relied to his detriment on 
 
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a statement that concealed or omitted material information 
regarding the health effects of smoking cigarettes or their addictive 
nature, and that was made in furtherance of” the Engle defendants’ 
conspiracy.  Id. 
The trial court refused.  It instead instructed the jury to 
determine “whether the conspiracy to withhold health information 
or information regarding addiction and any acts proven in 
furtherance of that conspiracy were relied upon by John Price to his 
detriment.”  Id. at 966.  RJR argued that the trial court’s refusal to 
give RJR’s requested special instruction on reliance was both 
erroneous and prejudicial. 
The First District agreed with RJR, principally on the authority 
of the decision in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Whitmire, 260 So. 3d 
536 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018).  The holding in Whitmire was that, to 
prevail on fraudulent concealment, Engle progeny plaintiffs “must 
prove detrimental reliance on fraudulent statements.”  Id. at 537.  
The Whitmire court started from the premise that the Engle 
defendants owed smokers no free-standing disclosure obligation 
and that the defendants’ disclosure obligation would therefore have 
to be triggered by the defendants’ statements.  The court further 
 
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reasoned that, absent a plaintiff’s reliance on those statements, 
there could be no liability for fraud.  Applying the Whitmire court’s 
holding, the First District here concluded that the disputed jury 
instruction in Prentice’s case was prejudicial error because neither 
it nor any other instruction informed the jury of the need to find 
that Price had relied on a statement.  To remedy the error, the 
district court vacated the entire judgment. 
The First District’s decision on the reliance issue conflicts with 
decisions of other district courts.  Specifically, although all Florida 
courts agree that fraudulent concealment and concealment 
conspiracy claims include a reliance element, the Second, Third, 
and Fourth Districts have held that an Engle progeny plaintiff need 
not prove reliance on a statement.  See Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. 
Duignan, 243 So. 3d 426 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017); Philip Morris USA, Inc. 
v. Chadwell, 306 So. 3d 174 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020); R.J. Reynolds 
Tobacco Co. v. Burgess, 294 So. 3d 910 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). 
We have now exercised our discretionary jurisdiction to review 
the First District’s decision and to resolve the conflict.  Each of the 
parties has asked us to address issues outside the conflict question, 
but we decline to do so.  We will not address Prentice’s fallback 
 
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argument that the First District erred by vacating the entire 
judgment, not just the verdict on the concealment conspiracy 
count.  Nor will we take up RJR’s renewed challenge to this Court’s 
decisions, in Engle III and later in Douglas, to give “res judicata 
effect” to the approved Phase I findings.  We apply those decisions 
in our opinion today, but we neither endorse them nor question 
their correctness. 
II.  
The parties have framed their dispute in clear terms.  RJR 
says that an Engle progeny plaintiff must prove reliance on a 
statement.  Prentice says that the plaintiff’s burden is to prove 
reliance on silence.  In our view, RJR is right.  We hold that, to 
prevail on fraudulent concealment and concealment conspiracy 
claims, an Engle progeny plaintiff must prove reliance on a 
statement that was made by an Engle defendant (for a concealment 
claim) or co-conspirator (for a conspiracy claim) and that concealed 
or omitted material information about the health effects or 
addictiveness of smoking cigarettes.  Before we explain why, we 
begin with three clarifying points. 
 
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First, although the jury here found RJR liable for concealment 
conspiracy and not for fraudulent concealment, we will discuss the 
two claims interchangeably.  It is common ground that each claim 
includes a reliance element and that our answer to the question 
presented in this case should apply equally to each claim.  See Loeb 
v. Geronemus, 66 So. 2d 241, 243 (Fla. 1953) (“The gist of a civil 
action for conspiracy is not the conspiracy itself but the civil wrong 
which is alleged to have been done pursuant to the conspiracy.”). 
Second, we emphasize that an Engle progeny plaintiff need not 
prove reliance on a statement that was affirmatively false on its 
face.  It is enough for the plaintiff to prove reliance on statements 
that, while not necessarily false on their face, are misleading 
because they conceal or omit other material information.  The key 
distinction is between making statements that are misleading by 
omission, on the one hand, and pure silence or a passive failure to 
disclose, on the other.  Only the former can support fraud liability 
in an Engle progeny case. 
Third, in its briefing here RJR says that reliance on “a 
statement” does not mean reliance on a specific statement—for 
example, a specific advertisement.  RJR maintains that reliance on 
 
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“a statement” can include “a category of statements addressing a 
particular topic (e.g., advertisements for filtered cigarettes).”  We 
agree that reliance on “a statement” does not require proof of 
reliance on “a specific statement,” and our holding must be taken to 
include this understanding.  As we will explain, what matters for 
purposes of reliance is that the plaintiff be able to prove a causal 
connection running from an Engle defendant’s statement or 
statements, to the plaintiff’s beliefs about the health effects or 
addictiveness of smoking cigarettes, to the plaintiff’s injury.  The 
statements relied upon must have been capable of causing the 
plaintiff to form a false belief about the health effects or 
addictiveness of smoking cigarettes.2 
A. 
We said in Hess v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 175 So. 3d 687, 698 
(Fla. 2015), that “Engle-progeny plaintiffs must certainly prove 
detrimental reliance in order to prevail on their fraudulent 
 
2.  We respectfully disagree with our dissenting colleague’s 
assertion that our holding “disregards the concept of proof of facts 
by inference in our jurisprudence.”  Our decision today resolves a 
district court conflict over whether an Engle progeny plaintiff must 
prove reliance on a statement; it does not address how the plaintiff 
may prove such reliance. 
 
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concealment claims.”  This case requires us to flesh out what that 
means.  We will start by discussing what reliance is and what work 
the reliance element does in a fraud claim. 
1. 
Reliance means that a plaintiff has entered a transaction in 
whole or in part because of the defendant’s fraudulent conduct.  
See 3 Dan B. Dobbs et al., The Law of Torts § 671, at 665 (2d ed. 
2011).  More specifically, reliance requires the plaintiff to have 
“received, believed, and acted upon” a misrepresentation by the 
defendant.  John C.P. Goldberg et al., The Place of Reliance in 
Fraud, 48 Ariz. L. Rev. 1001, 1007 (2006).  “[W]here the recipient 
knows the true facts that are misrepresented or for any reason does 
not believe the misrepresentation, he cannot be found to rely on it.”  
2 Fowler V. Harper et al., The Law of Torts § 7.13, at 465 (2d ed. 
1986) (footnotes omitted).  Similarly, there can be no reliance if the 
plaintiff is unaware of the defendant’s misrepresentation until after 
the transaction is complete, or if the plaintiff would have acted the 
same way regardless of whether the defendant had made the 
misrepresentation.  See Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for 
Economic Harm § 11 (Am. L. Inst. 2020). 
 
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Actionable misrepresentations are not limited to statements 
that are affirmatively false on their face.  Fraud liability can also be 
premised on statements that are misleading because they omit 
other material information.  Indeed, the common law has long 
recognized that the representation underlying a fraud claim can be 
communicated through myriad forms of conduct.  See generally W. 
Page Keeton et al., Prosser & Keeton on the Law of Torts § 106 (5th 
ed. 1984) (“The representation which will serve as a basis for an 
action of deceit . . . usually consists, of course, of oral or written 
words; but it is not necessarily so limited.”). 
What matters is that the defendant intend to induce the 
plaintiff’s reliance by creating a false impression in the plaintiff’s 
mind.  That is why our cases have made clear that, in any fraud 
case, the object of a plaintiff’s reliance is a representation by the 
defendant.  See, e.g., Am. Int’l Land Corp. v. Hanna, 323 So. 2d 567, 
569 (Fla. 1975) (“In an action for fraud and deceit plaintiff must 
allege (1) that defendant made a representation on which plaintiff 
was meant to act, (2) that the representation was false and 
defendant knew that fact, and (3) that plaintiff relied on the 
 
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representation to his injury.”).  Fraud is effected through 
representations. 
In the common law of fraud, reliance is what establishes the 
necessary connection between a fraudulent representation and the 
plaintiff’s injury.  Put differently, regardless of the form of the 
defendant’s fraudulent conduct, reliance is an indispensable aspect 
of proving causation in a fraud claim.  “The element of reliance 
overlaps with (and may be considered a form of) the usual 
requirement in tort that a defendant’s wrong be a factual or ‘but for’ 
cause of the harm that the plaintiff suffered.”  Restatement (Third) 
of Torts: Liability for Economic Harm § 11 cmt. a (Am. L. Inst. 
2020); see Leon Green, Deceit, 16 Va. L. Rev. 749, 762 (1930) 
(“Whether the plaintiff was induced to act upon the defendant’s 
representation is the question of causal relation in its simplest 
form.  It is usually stated in terms of the plaintiff’s reliance.”). 
2. 
Against this backdrop, we can now consider the nature of the 
fraudulent concealment claim involved in Engle itself.  The Engle 
class complaint had brought a single fraud count, under the 
heading “Fraud and Misrepresentation.”  See Amended Class Action 
 
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Complaint for Compensatory and Punitive Damages at 38, Engle v. 
Liggett Group, Inc., 945 So. 2d 1246 (Fla. 2006) (No. SC03-1856).  
Nonetheless, class counsel persuaded the Engle trial court to 
instruct the Phase I jury on two theories of fraud: “fraud and 
misrepresentation” and “fraud by concealment.” 
The tobacco defendants had objected to giving the Phase I jury 
a fraud by concealment instruction, arguing that that theory of 
fraud depends on a disclosure obligation absent from the case.  
Class counsel successfully rebutted the defendants’ argument by 
saying this to the trial court: 
And the fraud, it’s clear that concealment is very 
important, concealment in connection with representations 
or not telling the whole truth.  So that’s why we put it in 
and that’s why we feel it’s important.  And we also said it 
made the statements misleading, because that’s the point.  
So it is concealment, but it’s simply not concealment in the 
abstract.  If they didn’t open their mouths, if they did 
nothing, then [sic] would not have had, perhaps, that 
duty.  But we don’t have to address that issue because, 
not only did they speak, they spoke constantly to the 
public; and because of that they had a duty to tell the 
whole truth. 
 
(Emphasis added.) 
The Engle trial court eventually instructed the Phase I jury: 
On the Plaintiffs [sic] claim for fraud by 
concealment, the issues for your determination are: 
 
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(1), whether one or more of the Defendants omitted 
or concealed material facts that would be necessary to 
make statements by said Defendants not misleading; 
 
(2), whether one or more of the Defendants knew 
the statement was false when it was made or made the 
statement knowing that said Defendants was [sic] 
without knowledge of its truth or falsity, or knew of the 
existence of material facts that were not disclosed; 
 
(3), whether in making the false statement, or in 
concealing material facts, one or more of the Defendants 
intended that another rely on the omission or 
concealment. 
 
Intentional concealment exists where a party knows 
of defects in a product and intentionally conceals them, 
or, while under no duty to speak, nevertheless voluntarily 
does so, but does not speak honestly or makes 
misleading statements or suppresses facts. 
 
(Emphasis added.) 
Later, as to “fraud by concealment,” the Phase I jury answered 
yes to this question: “Did one or more of the Defendants conceal or 
omit material information, not otherwise known or available, 
knowing the material was false and misleading, or failed to disclose 
a material fact concerning or proving the health effects and/or 
addictive nature of smoking cigarettes?”  (Emphasis added.)  For the 
question to make sense, “the material” must be understood as 
 
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referring to material that the Engle defendants disseminated to the 
public. 
Reading these three things together—Engle class counsel’s 
argument at the Phase I charge conference, the Phase I jury 
instruction, and the Phase I jury finding—gives a clear picture of 
the Engle plaintiffs’ theory of the Engle defendants’ fraudulent 
conduct.  Namely, the Engle plaintiffs alleged that the defendants 
had made statements that concealed material information about the 
health effects or addictiveness of smoking cigarettes, with the 
intention of misleading would-be purchasers of the defendants’ 
products.  This conduct breached a duty that was well established 
in the common law of fraud: “Though a vendor may have no duty to 
speak, yet ‘if he does assume to speak, he must make a full and fair 
disclosure as to the matters about which he assumes to speak.  He 
must then avoid a deliberate nondisclosure.’ ”  Harper, et al., supra 
p.11, § 7.14, at 472 (quoting Franchey v. Hannes, 207 A.2d 268, 
271 (Conn. 1965)).  
3. 
Now consider an Engle progeny case.  These cases involve “the 
same causes of action between the same parties” as in Engle.  
 
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Douglas, 110 So. 3d at 432.  They allow a member of the decertified 
class to “pick up litigation of the approved six causes of action right 
where the class left off.”  Id.  For the reliance element of the 
fraudulent concealment claims, the Engle progeny plaintiff’s burden 
is to prove that the defendant’s fraudulent conduct—as defined in 
Engle—caused the plaintiff to form a false belief about the health 
effects or addictiveness of smoking cigarettes and then to act to his 
detriment.  And as we have explained, as to fraudulent 
concealment, the Engle defendants perpetrated their fraud through 
incomplete statements. 
The only way for an Engle progeny plaintiff to prove reliance 
(and therefore causation) is to show that he received, believed, and 
acted upon the statements that omitted the material information.  
Otherwise, the tobacco defendants’ omission of information from 
those statements could not have harmed the plaintiff.  It could not 
be said that the defendants’ fraudulent conduct deceived the 
plaintiff.  As the Restatement (Second) of Torts explains, when a 
defendant makes a statement that purports to tell the whole truth 
but does not, “there is a duty to disclose the additional information 
 
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necessary to prevent it from misleading the recipient.”  Restatement 
(Second) of Torts § 551 cmt. g (Am. L. Inst. 1977) (emphasis added). 
The reasoning underlying our holding is straightforward.  The 
Engle plaintiffs pursued a “fraud by concealment” theory that the 
tobacco defendants chose to speak and then did so incompletely 
and misleadingly.  It was only through their incomplete statements 
that the Engle defendants were able to create a false impression in 
the minds of listeners.  Only recipients of the defendants’ 
statements were capable of being deceived by those statements.  No 
statements, no deception, no causation.  Therefore, to prevail on a 
fraudulent concealment or concealment conspiracy claim, an Engle 
progeny plaintiff must prove reliance on a statement that was made 
by an Engle defendant or co-conspirator and that concealed or 
omitted material information about the health effects or 
addictiveness of smoking cigarettes. 
B. 
We are unconvinced by Prentice’s arguments to the contrary, 
starting with her assertion that an Engle progeny “plaintiff’s burden 
on causation is to prove reliance on silence.”  That is wrong for at 
least two reasons. 
 
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Analytically, the problem with Prentice’s argument is that the 
Engle defendants did not have a freestanding disclosure obligation.  
See generally Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 (Am. L. Inst. 
1977); Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Economic Harm 
§ 13 (Am. L. Inst. 2020).  Absent such a duty, a plaintiff is not 
entitled to infer any communicative content from a defendant’s 
silence or nondisclosure.  Even if we assume that there are some 
situations where a confidential or fiduciary relationship between the 
parties is such that silence could potentially communicate a tacit 
representation, this is not such a case.  (We need not address here 
whether it would ever be correct to instruct a jury to determine 
whether a plaintiff “relied on silence.”) 
More concretely, Prentice’s “reliance on silence” argument is 
utterly disconnected from the fraudulent conduct asserted in Engle.  
As we have detailed, class counsel told the Engle trial court that it 
should instruct the Phase I jury on “fraud by concealment” because 
“not only did [the Engle defendants] speak, they spoke constantly to 
the public; and because of that they had a duty to tell the whole 
truth.”  Prentice echoes this theme in her brief here, where she 
describes “a campaign of doubt unprecedented in American 
 
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history.”  She says that the Engle defendants for decades fostered a 
“false controversy” over the health effects and addictiveness of 
smoking; “attacked accurate health warnings”; used front 
organizations to “ventriloquize[] the conspirators’ controversy 
message to the American public”; and even lied publicly to 
Congress.  This is the opposite of silence. 
Prentice also argues that requiring an Engle progeny plaintiff 
to prove reliance on a statement disregards the fact that, having 
chosen to speak, the Engle defendants took on a duty to disclose.  
But we do not question that the Engle defendants had a duty to 
disclose or that they breached that duty—the approved Phase I 
concealment findings require us to take those things as a given.  
The role of the reliance element now is to require proof that the 
Engle defendants’ breach of their duty caused harm to the plaintiff 
in an Engle progeny case.  See Ford New Holland, Inc. v. Proctor-
Russell Tractor Co., Inc., 630 So. 2d 395, 399 (Ala. 1993) (“The 
requirement that the plaintiff show that a failure to disclose an 
existing material fact created a false impression is as basic to an 
action alleging fraudulent suppression as the requirement that the 
plaintiff establish the defendant’s duty to disclose.”). 
 
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Here we emphasize that “[t]he type of interest protected by the 
law of deceit is the interest in formulating business judgments 
without being misled by others—in short, in not being cheated.”  
Harper, et al., supra p.11, § 7.1, at 378.  This interest is different in 
kind from a freestanding interest in being informed by others.  The 
common law of fraud does not protect the latter interest. 
Prentice is therefore wrong when she argues that the decisive 
question here is “whether the plaintiff would have behaved the 
same way had she known the true facts.”  Under that theory, it 
would not matter whether an Engle defendant’s fraudulent conduct 
caused an Engle plaintiff in the first instance to form a false belief 
about the health effects or addictiveness of smoking cigarettes; all 
that would matter is whether additional disclosure by the 
defendants would have cured any such misapprehension, whatever 
its source.  But that type of causal relationship between a 
defendant’s conduct and a plaintiff’s injury is not reliance.  And 
Prentice’s theory invites pure speculation over questions as basic as 
whether an Engle plaintiff would even have heard and given 
credence to additional disclosures from the Engle defendants. 
 
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Finally, we address Prentice’s overarching contention that this 
Court’s decision in Engle III to give “res judicata effect” to the Phase 
I “fraud by concealment” findings but not to the “fraud and 
misrepresentation” findings necessarily requires us to accept 
Prentice’s position on reliance.  As to “fraud and 
misrepresentation,” the Phase I jury answered yes to this question: 
“Did one or more of the Defendants make a false statement of a 
material fact, either knowing the statement was false or misleading, 
or being without knowledge as to its truth or falsity, with the 
intention of misleading smokers?”  In Engle III, we held that this 
finding “cannot stand” for res judicata purposes in individual class 
member actions, because the finding is “nonspecific” and 
“inadequate to allow a subsequent jury to consider individual 
questions of reliance and legal cause.”  Engle III, 945 So. 2d at 
1255. 
Prentice reads far too much into this Court’s unexplained 
distinction between the fraud findings that we approved in Engle III 
and the ones that we did not.3  Our Court drew this distinction on 
 
 
3.  Whatever the difference between the two might be, it is 
hardly self-evident.  The Restatement (Second) of Torts says that the 
 
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its own, unprompted by the parties and without the benefit of 
argument on the point.  We adopted the distinction as a supposedly 
“pragmatic solution” to the perceived problem of how to decertify 
the Engle class without wasting the year-long Phase I proceedings. 
Our Engle III opinion did not explain what made the Phase I 
finding on fraud by concealment sufficiently “specific,” nor did our 
decision elaborate on how that finding was to be used in the 
progeny cases.  Most importantly, nowhere in Engle III—or in any of 
our Engle follow-on cases—did our Court express any view as to 
 
two theories of fraud are sometimes interchangeable.  See 
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 cmt. g, § 529 (Am. L. Inst. 
1977).  And, as the Arizona Supreme Court has observed, 
“misrepresentation and concealment both may constitute actionable 
fraud, and in some cases may factually be but two sides of the same 
legal coin.”  Madisons Chevrolet, Inc. v. Donald, 505 P.2d 1039, 
1042 (Ariz. 1973).  This Court itself has observed that “where a 
failure to disclose a material fact is calculated to induce a false 
belief, the distinction between concealment and affirmative 
representations is tenuous.”  Johnson v. Davis, 480 So. 2d 625, 628 
(Fla. 1985).  See also Little v. First Cal. Co., 532 F.2d 1302, 1304 n.4 
(9th Cir. 1976) (“The categories of ‘omission’ and ‘misrepresentation’ 
are not mutually exclusive.  All misrepresentations are also 
nondisclosures, at least to the extent that there is a failure to 
disclose which facts in the representation are not true.”).  As we 
have already explained, even in concealment cases the defendant’s 
fraudulent conduct must convey to the plaintiff a representation, 
one that is capable of being believed or disbelieved. 
 
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what an Engle progeny plaintiff must prove to establish the reliance 
element of a concealment-based fraud claim.  Our obligation now is 
to answer that question by recourse to longstanding principles of 
the common law of fraud, not to invent a new, Engle-only law of 
reliance. 
C. 
Against this backdrop, we readily agree with the First District 
that RJR’s requested jury instruction on concealment conspiracy 
was correct and that the trial court’s instruction was both 
erroneous and prejudicial.  The trial court here instructed the jury 
to determine “whether the conspiracy to withhold health 
information or information regarding addiction and any acts proven 
in furtherance of that conspiracy were relied upon by John Price to 
his detriment and were a legal cause of John Price’s death.”  We do 
not know what it means to rely on a conspiracy, and we doubt that 
the jury did, either.  The jury here could reasonably have been 
misled into finding liability based on mere nondisclosure, without 
connecting that nondisclosure to Price’s injury. 
Similarly, it is error in an Engle progeny case to instruct the 
jury that the plaintiff can prevail on fraudulent concealment and 
 
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concealment conspiracy by proving “reliance on concealment” or 
“reliance on an omission.”  For one thing, the concept of reliance on 
a concealment or omission—reliance on information hidden from 
the plaintiff—is unavoidably confusing and maybe even 
nonsensical.  See duPont v. Brady, 828 F.2d 75, 78 (2d Cir. 1987) 
(“[I]n instances of total non-disclosure, . . . it is of course impossible 
to demonstrate reliance.” (quoting Titan Group, Inc. v. Faggen, 513 
F.2d 234, 239 (2d Cir. 1975))).  And in practical terms, by telling an 
Engle progeny jury to look for proof of reliance on a concealment or 
omission, a trial court erroneously invites the jury to find liability 
without causation. 
III. 
We approve the First District’s decision in the case under 
review, to the extent it is consistent with this opinion.  We 
disapprove the decisions of the Second, Third, and Fourth Districts 
in Duignan, Chadwell, and Burgess, to the extent they are 
inconsistent with this opinion. 
 
It is so ordered. 
CANADY, C.J., and POLSTON, LAWSON, COURIEL, and 
GROSSHANS, JJ., concur. 
LABARGA, J., dissents with an opinion. 
 
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NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
LABARGA, J., dissenting. 
 
Today’s decision by the majority disturbs decades of settled 
law regarding Engle progeny litigation and injects uncertainty into 
the remaining Engle progeny cases.  Because I cannot agree with 
such a fundamental shift in this Court’s jurisprudence, I 
respectfully dissent. 
 
In this Engle progeny case, the jury found in favor of Linda 
Prentice (Prentice), as personal representative of the Estate of John 
C. Price (Price), the now deceased smoker in this litigation, on 
Prentice’s claims for strict liability, negligence, and the intentional 
tort of concealment conspiracy.  Price, who throughout his adult life 
smoked multiple packs of R.J. Reynolds cigarettes per day 
(including during the heyday of the Marlboro Man, Joe Camel and 
the Old Gold Dancers), was afflicted with chronic obstructive 
pulmonary disease (COPD)—a disease that ultimately led to his 
death. 
The focus of this appeal is whether Prentice was required to 
present direct evidence showing that Price relied on a statement 
 
- 27 - 
made by an Engle defendant to satisfy the reliance element of the 
concealment claims, or whether the reliance element may be 
inferred from the now well-known pervasive and misleading 
advertising campaigns pursued by tobacco companies over the 
years. 
Until today, it was settled law in Florida that a jury in an Engle 
progeny case was permitted to infer reliance based upon evidence of 
the smoker’s own history coupled with the tobacco industry’s 
pervasive advertising and creation of a false controversy about the 
risks of smoking, without the necessity of proving that the smoker 
relied on any specific statement by tobacco companies.  After all, 
Engle findings conclusively established that the tobacco companies 
agreed to conceal, omit, and misinterpret information regarding the 
health effects of cigarettes or their addictive nature, with the 
intention that smokers and the public would rely on this 
information to their detriment.  See Engle v. Liggett Grp., Inc., 945 
So. 2d 1246, 1257 n.4 (Fla. 2006). 
To that end, the notion of requiring proof of reliance based 
upon a specific statement by the tobacco industry was soundly 
rejected by a majority of Florida appellate courts, notably beginning 
 
- 28 - 
with the seminal case of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Martin, 53 So. 
3d 1060 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010), rendered by the First District Court of 
Appeal twelve years ago.  There, the First District rejected the 
requirement of proof of reliance based upon a statement made by 
an Engle defendant.  The court deemed the following persuasive: 
[T]he record contains abundant evidence from which the 
jury could infer Mr. Martin’s reliance on pervasive 
misleading advertising campaigns for the Lucky Strike 
brand in particular and for cigarettes in general, and on 
the false controversy created by the tobacco industry 
during the years he smoked aimed at creating doubt 
among smokers that cigarettes were hazardous to health. 
 
Id. at 1069 (emphasis added). 
However, eight years after Martin, the First District 
inexplicably made a marked shift regarding what constitutes proof 
of reliance.  See R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Whitmire, 260 So. 3d 
536 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018).  In Whitmire, the First District held that to 
prevail on a claim of fraudulent concealment, “Engle [progeny] 
plaintiffs must prove detrimental reliance on fraudulent 
statements.”  Id. at 537.  The court stated: “The circumstantial 
evidence must establish individualized reliance by the plaintiff, and 
this cannot be shown through mere presentation of general 
evidence of the plaintiff's life and behavior, where, as here, that 
 
- 29 - 
evidence gives no indication that the plaintiff relied on any false 
information disseminated by the tobacco companies.”  Id. at 540-
41. 
Notably however, the First District did not recede from Martin, 
which as Judge Makar noted in his dissent, “remains applicable 
law.”  Id. at 542 (Makar, J., dissenting).  Nonetheless, the First 
District’s decision in Whitmire paved the way for the court’s 2019 
decision in Prentice, and ultimately, the conflict that the majority 
decides today.  These decisions, though, rendered the First District 
an outlier among the district courts of appeal. 
Since Martin, a majority of the district courts of appeal have 
rejected the requirement of reliance on a specific statement to prove 
fraudulent concealment.  See, e.g., Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. 
Duignan, 243 So. 3d 426, 441-42 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017) (“[Florida] 
courts have refused to hold that an Engle progeny plaintiff must 
identify specific statements that he read or heard and relied upon in 
making a decision regarding cigarette smoking in order to prevail.”). 
For instance, in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Burgess, 294 So. 
3d 910 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020), the Fourth District Court of Appeal 
noted the First District’s pivot in Whitmire and observed that 
 
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Whitmire “appears to be in tension with its earlier Martin decision.”  
Id. at 913.  The court in Burgess acknowledged that Whitmire 
“found substantially similar evidence of detrimental reliance to be 
insufficient as a matter of law,” but determined nonetheless: 
 
Here, we conclude that the trial court properly 
denied RJR’s motion for directed verdict.  The plaintiff 
presented sufficient evidence from which the jury could 
infer that Mr. Burgess detrimentally relied upon the 
tobacco industry’s pervasive advertising and creation of a 
false controversy about the risks of smoking.  Mr. 
Burgess did not need to prove that he relied on any 
specific statement from the tobacco industry.  Because 
the evidence showed that the tobacco industry delivered 
a fraudulent message to the smoking public, it was 
“immaterial whether it passe[d] through a direct or 
circuitous channel in reaching” Mr. Burgess. 
 
Burgess, 294 So. 3d at 913-14 (emphasis added) (quoting Phillip 
Morris USA v. Naugle, 103 So. 3d 944, 947 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012)). 
 
Similarly, in Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. Chadwell, 306 So. 3d 
174, 183-84 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020), the Third District Court of Appeal 
acknowledged the decisions in Whitmire and Prentice but rejected 
their reasoning: 
 
Here, the record contains sufficient evidence from 
which the jury could infer Mr. Chadwell's reliance on 
statements, advertisements, or omissions via the tobacco 
companies’ pervasive misleading advertising campaigns.  
We reject the Whitmire holding to the extent it appears to 
require an Engle-progeny plaintiff to show that a smoker 
 
- 31 - 
explicitly relied to his detriment on specific “false or 
misleading statements,” as opposed to a smoker’s 
misapprehension concerning a material fact the 
conspirators concealed from the smoker in furtherance of 
their agreement to conceal or omit information regarding 
the health effect or addictive nature of cigarettes, as 
previously allowed by many Florida courts when the 
circumstances of a given case so warranted. 
 
Id. at 184 (emphasis added). 
 
Despite the sound reasoning set forth in these decisions, today 
the majority concurs with the First District’s decision in Prentice 
and lays to rest any doubt about whether an Engle progeny plaintiff 
must prove reliance on a statement made by an Engle defendant or 
co-conspirator.  However, in doing so, the majority not only 
disregards the point of the Engle findings, but it also disregards the 
importance of the concept of proof of facts by inference in our 
jurisprudence. 
 
An inference, unlike a presumption, is “[a] logical and 
reasonable conclusion of a fact not presented by direct evidence but 
which, by process of logic and reason, a trier of fact may conclude 
exists from the established facts.”  Golden Yachts, Inc. v. Hall, 920 
So. 2d 777, 780-81 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (quoting Black’s Law 
Dictionary 778 (6th ed. 1990).  Whether the inferred fact is found to 
 
- 32 - 
exist will be decided by the trier of fact.  Charles W. Ehrhardt, 
Florida Evidence § 301.1 (2021 ed.). 
 
Proof of fact by inference is a recognized standard in Florida 
jurisprudence.  It is often a substantial factor in the consideration 
of motions for directed verdicts in civil actions.  For instance, in 
Owen v. Publix Supermarkets, Inc., 802 So. 2d 315, 329 (Fla. 2001), 
this Court concluded that the directed verdicts in a slip and fall 
case at a supermarket were erroneously entered because the 
condition of the substance (a piece of banana) alleged to have 
caused the fall raised a basis for establishing the store’s 
constructive knowledge.  The Court noted that whether the aging of 
the banana occurred before it fell or whether the aging occurred on 
the floor is an issue for the jury, as are the reasonable inferences 
from the failure to sweep the floors regularly.  Id. at 332. 
 
In reaching this conclusion, the Court reasoned that appellate 
courts “reviewing the grant of a directed verdict must view the 
evidence and all inferences of fact in the light most favorable to the 
nonmoving party, and can affirm a directed verdict only where no 
proper view of the evidence could sustain a verdict in favor of the 
nonmoving party.”  Id. at 329 (emphasis added) (citing Frenz 
 
- 33 - 
Enters., Inc. v. Port Everglades, 746 So. 2d 498, 502 (Fla. 4th DCA 
1999)). 
 
Additionally, in Florida civil cases, a jury may infer negligence 
when the concept of res ipsa loquitur has been established.  This 
Court has explained: 
 
Res ipsa loquitur is not a substantive rule of law, 
but is rather a rule of evidence.  It permits the jury (but 
not the court in a jury trial) to draw an inference of 
negligence where the instrument causing an injury is 
shown to have been under the exclusive management 
and control of the party charged with negligence, and an 
accident has occurred from it that under circumstances 
of due care would not have occurred in the ordinary 
course of events, except for negligent handling by the 
party having control of the instrument causing injury.  
Turner, Law of Implied Negligence, par. 1, p. 3. 
 
Am. Dist. Elec. Prot. Co. v. Seaboard Air Line Ry. Co., 177 So. 294, 
296 (Fla. 1937) (emphasis added).  Consistent with this language, 
the standard jury instruction on res ipsa loquitur provides: 
If you find that ordinarily the [incident] [injury] would not 
have happened without negligence, 
 
[and that the (item) causing the injury was in the 
exclusive control of (defendant) at the time it caused the 
injury,] . . . 
 
you may infer that (defendant) was negligent unless, 
taking into consideration all of the evidence in the case, 
you find that the (describe the event) was not due to any   
negligence on the part of (defendant).  
 
- 34 - 
Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Civ.) 401.7 (footnote omitted) (emphasis 
added).4 
 
Moreover, in the business litigation context, Florida courts 
have utilized the sanction of adverse evidentiary inferences in cases 
involving negligent spoliation of evidence by a party to address the 
lack of evidence.  Martino v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 908 So. 2d 342, 
346-47 (Fla. 2005). 
 
So firmly ingrained is the use of inferences in our 
jurisprudence, that it has been codified in Florida’s Evidence Code.  
“In 1976, presumptions were codified into the Florida Evidence 
Code,” and they have “remained essentially unchanged.”  Universal 
Ins. Co. of N. Am. v. Warfel, 82 So. 3d 47, 53 (Fla. 2012).  Section 
90.301(3), Florida Statutes (2021), provides: “Nothing in this 
chapter shall prevent the drawing of an inference that is 
appropriate.”5 
 
 
4.  The instruction also provides alternative language for 
“cases involving exploding bottles or other instrumentalities that are 
no longer in the defendant’s control at the time of plaintiff’s injury.”  
Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Civ.) 401.7 (Note on Use). 
 
5.  Section 90.301(4), Florida Statutes (2021), limits the 
application of sections 90.301-.304 to civil actions and proceedings. 
 
- 35 - 
 
Paradoxically, this Court will readily allow a conviction for 
first-degree murder to stand entirely on inference even though the 
evidentiary burdens and potential consequences in criminal cases 
are much greater than in civil cases.  In Bush v. State, 295 So. 3d 
179 (Fla. 2020), where this Court abandoned the long-standing 
heightened standard of review applicable to convictions in death 
penalty cases based solely on circumstantial evidence, this Court 
gave great weight to the strength of jury inference.6  Explaining its 
decision, the Court stated: 
Indeed, if we were to reject the jury’s verdict and the 
reasonable inferences the jury must have drawn from the 
evidence to reach that verdict, we would, in effect, be 
saying that a jury is required to entertain “a mere 
possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary, or forced 
doubt,” contrary to the standard jury instructions given 
in all criminal cases.  See Fla. Std. Jury Inst. (Crim.) 3.7. 
 
Bush, 295 So. 3d at 201 (emphasis added). 
 
It defies logic to say that inference can be reliable enough to 
secure a criminal conviction and resulting sentence of death, but at 
 
 
6.  “Circumstantial evidence is proof of certain facts and 
circumstances from which the trier of fact may infer that the 
ultimate facts in dispute existed or did not exist.”  Davis v. State, 90 
So. 2d 629, 631 (Fla. 1956). 
 
- 36 - 
the same time so unreliable that it can never, on its own, 
demonstrate reliance in the Engle civil context.  If anything, the 
situation should be reversed, with inference receiving heightened 
scrutiny in the criminal context, and receiving some deference in 
the civil context. 
 
Such deference is entirely appropriate with respect to proof of 
fraudulent concealment in Engle progeny cases.  I fully agree with 
the Third District’s conclusion in Chadwell, 306 So. 3d 174, that 
“the element of reliance can be inferred from the now well-known 
pervasive and misleading advertising campaigns pursued by 
tobacco companies over the years.”  Id. at 182.  Here, Price 
described the impact of the tobacco industry’s pervasive advertising 
campaign on his smoking decisions, and under any process of logic 
or reason, satisfied the reliance element in question. 
 
The dissent in Prentice provides a clear picture of how the 
pervasiveness of the misleading advertising by the tobacco industry 
impacted not only Price’s smoking decisions, but surely also the 
decisions of countless similarly situated persons.  According to the 
dissent, when asked how R.J. Reynolds’ advertisements injured 
him, Price testified that “they presented the ‘Marlboro Man’ as if to 
 
- 37 - 
‘make everything look hunky-dory’ and ‘Joe Camel’ and the ‘Old 
Gold Dancers’ who ‘made [smoking] look like the thing to do, the in 
crowd.  You’re in the in crowd.’ ”  R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. 
Prentice, 290 So. 3d 963, 969 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (Makar, J., 
dissenting). 
 
In other words, “Mr. Price’s deposition testimony (read at trial) 
indicates that the pervasive tobacco advertisements duped him into 
thinking smoking was the thing to do when the tobacco companies 
knew, but concealed, smoking’s devastating health consequences, 
which is precisely the type of evidence that demonstrates 
detrimental reliance.”  Id. at 970.  Based on this evidence, the jury 
was entitled to infer that the misleading advertisements 
detrimentally affected Mr. Price’s smoking behavior, thereby 
establishing reliance.  By requiring reliance on a specific statement, 
the majority has removed all permissible inferences of fact 
concerning the causal relationship between the tobacco industry’s 
advertisement campaigns and the smoking decisions of Engle 
progeny plaintiffs, such as Price.  In doing so, the majority has not 
only encroached on the exclusive province of the jury, but it has 
 
- 38 - 
made it virtually impossible for Engle plaintiffs to maintain a 
fraudulent concealment claim. 
 
Because I cannot agree with such a consequential and 
erroneous shift in the well-established jurisprudence of Engle 
progeny litigation in our state, I respectfully dissent. 
Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal 
Direct Conflict of Decisions 
 
 
First District – Case No. 1D17-2104 
 
 
(Duval County) 
 
Celene H. Humphries, Thomas J. Seider, and Shea T. Moxon of 
Brannock Humphries & Berman, Tampa, Florida; Gregory D. 
Prysock, Katherine M. Massa, and Antonio Luciano of Morgan & 
Morgan, P.A., Jacksonville, Florida, and Keith R. Mitnik of Morgan 
& Morgan, P.A., Orlando, Florida, 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Marie A. Borland and Troy A. Fuhrman of Hill Ward Henderson, 
Tampa, Florida; and Jason T. Burnette, Brian Charles Lea, 
Stephanie E. Parker, John Walker, and Emily Baker of Jones Day, 
Atlanta, Georgia, Charles R.A. Morse of Jones Day, New York, New 
York, and Michael A. Carvin of Jones Day, Washington, District of 
Columbia, 
 
 
for Respondent 
 
Christine R. Davis and Joseph H. Lang, Jr. of Carlton Fields, P.A., 
Tallahassee, Florida; and William W. Large of Florida Justice 
Reform Institute, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
 
for Amicus Curiae Florida Justice Reform Institute 
 
- 39 - 
Geoffrey J. Michael of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, 
Washington, District of Columbia; and Jesse Panuccio of Boies 
Schiller Flexner LLP, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 
 
 
for Amicus Curiae Philip Morris USA Inc.