A Florida court has upheld a $28.3 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in a lawsuit filed by the family of a deceased smoker.

The 1st District Court of Appeal's ruling Tuesday marked the first decision on an appeal in thousands of smoker lawsuits being tried across the state. The court sided with the family of Pensacola smoker Benny Martin, who died of lung cancer in 1995.

The appeals judges disagreed with the tobacco company's claims that damages were excessive.

About 8,000 similar lawsuits are being tried individually after the state Supreme Court in 2006 threw out a $145 billion class-action damage award for smokers. That decision also concluded that cigarette makers knowingly sold dangerous and defective products.

Israeli mobile phone company Cellcom Israel Ltd. said Thursday that it has received two class-action lawsuits seeking NIS 61 millions ($16.6 million) and NIS 25 millions, respectively. The company did not have a comment about the lawsuits chances of success.

Also on Thursday, the company acknowledged that its network suffered an outage Wednesday. To make amends, it will refund all of its subscribers' calls and text messages for the past week, a concession that the company says will negatively affect its results for the current quarter.

Shares of Cellcom rose 53 cents to $34.18 in afternoon trading.

The service sector expanded for the 11th straight month in November and at the fastest pace in six months.

Friday's report from the Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group, follows a string of other indicators this week indicating the economy is steadily improving. But the Labor Department issued a disappointing jobs report Friday that showed the expansion didn't boost hiring in November. The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent last month, as job creation slowed.

The ISM said that its service sector index, which covers 80 percent of the economy, rose to 55 last month from 54.3 in October. It was the highest reading since May. Any figure over 50 indicates growth.

"Economic activity is still moving along, but uncertainty and a lack of clarity over the economy and over regulatory issues continue to impede hiring," said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Some economists were mildly encouraged by the ISM's index of new orders, which rose by one point to 57.7, and its employment index, which moved to a three-year high of 52.7.

Those are more forward-looking indicators than the employment report, said Brian Levitt, an economist at OppenheimerFunds. They signal that hiring and growth will likely improve in the coming months.

Still, the ISM's report on the service sector is consistent with annual economic growth of about 3 percent, economists said. That's weak for a recovery after such a steep recession, and not enough to rapidly reduce unemployment.

SLATER & Gordon has filed a follow-up case in its long-running shareholder class action against the Centro property group.

The latest class action is limited to a subset of investors who acquired Centro shares after PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company's former auditor, began working for the property group in the latter part of 2007.

The case filed yesterday was necessitated by a decision handed down last month by Federal Court judge Donnell Ryan, who ruled that every potential claimant in a class action must have a claim against every defendant in the case.

Advertisement: Story continues below Slater & Gordon and Maurice Blackburn are running parallel class actions on behalf of Centro investors in the Federal Court.

The cases are set down for a trial before Justice John Middleton, beginning on August 22 next year.

Justice Ryan was following a decision of 10 years ago when the Full Court was considering the position of plaintiffs in a class action brought against tobacco products manufacturer Philip Morris.

Although other Federal Court judges have challenged whether the all-on-all approach is correct, Justice Ryan's decision meant the entire list of Slater & Gordon's clients who are suing the Centro companies couldn't also sue PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That is because some of the Slater & Gordon clients bought their shares before PricewaterhouseCoopers became involved with Centro. Slater & Gordon has also signalled to the court that it may seek leave to amend its original statement of claim against the Centro companies so that it traverses a shorter period of alleged wrongdoing.

The current case covers the period from April 5, 2007, to February 28, 2008, but a future amendment is likely to bring the starting date to mid-July 2007.

Slater & Gordon's class action is being funded by Comprehensive Legal Funding; Maurice Blackburn's case is funded by IMF Ltd.

The fate of the largest job bias lawsuit in the nation's history — a claim that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. shortchanged women in pay and promotions for many years — hinges on whether the Supreme Court will let the class-action case go to trial.

The court is likely to announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the retail giant's appeal asserting that a single lawsuit cannot speak for more than 1.5 million employees.

Business lawyers and civil rights advocates are closely following the Wal-Mart case for its implications for class-action litigation.
"This may sound like just a technical, procedural issue, but because of the economics of it, class-action certification is often the most important issue to be decided," said Washington lawyer Roy T. Englert Jr.

If the high court permits the Wal-Mart case to proceed as a class action, it will put enormous pressure on the retailer to settle, he said. The plaintiffs have not specified the damages they would seek, but given the size of the class, it could mount into billions of dollars.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several large corporations have joined with Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer, in urging the high court to hear the appeal and to restrict the use of class-action claims.

They argue that it is unfair to permit plaintiffs' lawyers to lump together many thousands of employees from stores spread across the country and to rely on statistics to prove illegal discrimination.