She said Mr. Johnson, a longshoreman and hotel shuttle bus driver to whom she was married from 1990 until his death six years later, began smoking around age 13. He often lit a fresh cigarette with the butt end of another.

“He really did smoke a lot,” she said.

He had two children, who are now 23 and 29.

“The damages awarded in this case are grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law,” J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R. J. Reynolds, said Saturday in a statement. “This verdict goes far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness and is completely inconsistent with the evidence presented. We plan to file post-trial motions with the trial court promptly and are confident that the court will follow the law and not allow this runaway verdict to stand.”

Such efforts by the industry are often successful. In October 2002, a Los Angeles jury awarded $28 billion in punitive damages against Philip Morris USA. In August 2011, an appeals court reduced the punitive damages to $28 million.

The Florida case was among the thousands of the so-called “Engle progeny” cases that stemmed from a 2006 court decision ruling that smokers could not file class-action suits but were free to do so individually.

That decision reversed a $145 billion verdict in a class action awarded in 2000 on behalf of a Miami Beach pediatrician, Howard A. Engle. An appeals court voided the award, saying it was excessive and the cases of individual smokers were too disparate to be considered as a class.