Passive smoking victim awarded $715,000

ROME - An Italian lung cancer victim who spent seven years inhaling her colleagues' second-hand cigarette smoke in a cramped government office was posthumously awarded €400,000 ($715,000) in damages yesterday by a Rome court.

The damages will be paid to her surviving relatives.

They are believed to be the largest ever awarded in Italy due to second-hand smoke and the first against the government.

"It's a very important precedent, because it opens the way for hundreds, thousands of other cases," said Marco Ramadori at consumer group Codacons, which backed the lawsuit.

Maria Sposetti, who worked for the Education Ministry, was the only non-smoker in a small street-level office that she shared with three smokers. She complained, but was told there was no law at the time prohibiting smoking, Codacons said.

She was later diagnosed with cancer and had part of her right lung removed in 1992. She was undergoing chemotherapy at the time of her death, in a traffic accident in February 2000. She was 57.

The court argued that the ministry failed to protect her at her workplace. The case is the latest victory by anti-smoking campaigners, who in January toasted the enactment of a nationwide smoking ban in shared areas. It aims to end passive smoking and deter a habit health officials say kills 90,000 Italians a year.

- REUTERS