The family of late San Diego Padres legend Tony Gwynn filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against tobacco corporation Altria Group Inc. in San Diego Superior Court on Monday.
Tyler Kepner of the New York Times reported the news of the Gwynns’ legal action. The Hall of Famer died of salivary gland cancer in June 2014 at age 54 following decades of smokeless tobacco use.
Per Kepner, Gwynn used “one-and-a-half to two cans” of smokeless tobacco every day for 31 years. The lawsuit claims Gwynn was manipulated into his tobacco addiction.
Gwynn’s son, Tony Gwynn Jr., was named as one of three plaintiffs in the suit. Junior’s mother, Alicia Gwynn, and his sister, Anisha Gwynn-Jones, were the other two. Gwynn Jr. said his father didn’t know the dangers or health risks associated with dipping when he started and that his dad didn’t smoke or drink.
“The tobacco companies were using his addiction to turn him into their ultimate walking billboard,” Gwynn Jr. said. “He never knew it, but they were using him to promote their dip to the next generation of kids and fans who idolized him.”
University of California San Francisco School of Dentistry assistant professor Benjamin Chaffee co-authored a study last year “that found that 15 percent of male high school students in the United States used smokeless tobacco, and that high school athletes used at an even higher rate,” per Kepner. Chaffee said:
If you look at the marketing that smokeless tobacco companies have been doing for decades, there was absolutely tying-in with baseball products — caps, other gear, equipment or promotional items. It was a very intentional action to intertwine smokeless tobacco as part of the baseball culture — really, an intentional infiltration of the values of the sport with a product that was known to be deadly and continues to be deadly today.
Gwynn received free samples of smokeless tobacco when he was a college player at San Diego State, which he attended from 1977 to 1981. He was pictured on Topps baseball cards with tobacco in his mouth in 1985 and 1989. Those cards were featured in the suit.
When Gwynn was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, doctors found that the duct from the right parotid salivary gland where the cancer was detected “led directly to the spot where he placed his dip for so many years,” per Kepner.
According to the suit, Gwynn’s smokeless tobacco use was equivalent to smoking four to five packs of cigarettes per day. The lawsuit doesn’t seek specific damages but requests a jury trial on the grounds of negligence, fraud and product liability, per Kepner.
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