However, there's a more important immediate problem for the tobacco industry. Even if the punitive damage amount is not so large as to bankrupt the industry, they were until recently in a position where they could not borrow enough money to post a bond to appeal the punitive damage decision. This would have forced them to settle the case before they could raise all of their defenses on appeal. This is really what has saved the tobacco industry's near-term prospects. They would have been forced to settle this case, and I can tell you, they really don't want to do that now.
Manufacturers do place warning labels on their products already.
That's a fundamental principal of product liability law. The warning label issue in this litigation is frankly no longer an interesting issue. The arguments made regarding cautious fraud and misrepresentation overwhelm any defense the tobacco companies have raised through the warning label. Not only to Congress, but to the general public. Until documentation of an alleged, and I stress alleged, organized effort by the industry to conceal what they knew about their product was revealed in the early 1990s, juries generally accepted what earlier chat room questioners mentioned as the assumption of risk argument.