Miami ? A Florida appeals court Wednesday threw out a record-shattering $145 billion verdict won by thousands of Florida smokers against the tobacco industry, saying the case should not have been tried as a class-action lawsuit.

The 3rd District Court of Appeals said the smokers did not have enough in common to pursue a single lawsuit against the nation’s five biggest cigarette makers.

By eliminating class-action status, the three-judge panel discarded the damages awarded by a Miami-Dade County jury in 2000 after a two-year trial.

Tobacco stocks jumped on the news.

“This decision clearly shows we were right when we said it was inappropriate for this case to be pursued as a class-action,” said Mark Smith, a spokesman for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., whose cigarette brands include Kool and Lucky Strike.

Ronald Milstein, vice president and general counsel of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Kent and Newport cigarettes, said: “We feel that we’ve been completely vindicated in every respect.”

The other defendants were Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and the Liggett Group.

Even with tobacco’s victory, Philip Morris, Lorillard and Liggett are out $710 million. After the trial, the three companies agreed to pay that nonrefundable amount to keep Florida smokers from challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that protects companies from having to post ruinous amounts in bond when they appeal verdicts.

Margaret Amodeo, whose husband, Frank, was awarded $5.8 million in compensatory damages by the jury for his throat cancer, said the couple were “very disappointed.” The appeals court threw out the individual awards as well.

Attorneys Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, who represented the smokers, were out of town and could not be reached for comment.

The jury decided that cigarettes are deadly, addictive and defective because they make people sick when used as directed. It set punitive damages for an estimated 300,000 to 700,000 smokers, and also awarded compensatory damages to three people with cancer who served as representatives of the group.

Under a plan outlined by the trial judge, the next step in the case was supposed to be individual mini-trials to decide whether and how much each of the rest of the smokers should get in compensatory damages.

In addition to eliminating class-action status, the appeals court agreed with the tobacco industry that the award would have violated state law by bankrupting the companies. And it said the framework for the trial and the mini-trials was unconstitutional.

“The fate of an entire industry, and of close to a million Florida residents, cannot rest upon such a fundamentally unfair proceeding,” the panel wrote. “Our system of justice requires more.”

The court said that individual lawsuits would be more efficient than the class-action. The smokers are free to pursue that option.

“Absent intervention by the Florida Supreme Court, this would appear to be a terrible blow to the class of sick smokers in Florida,” said Mark Gottlieb, an attorney with the anti-smoking Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University law school.

He called the decision surprising because before the trial, the same appeals court in 1996 said the case could be tried as class-action made up of Florida smokers.

In afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Philip Morris parent Altria Group was up $3.45 at $38.36; R.J. Reynolds was up $2.38 at $34.09; and Lorillard parent Loews Corp. was up $2.08 at $44.46.

Philip Morris hopes the decision will bolster its challenge to a $10.1 billion verdict in an Illinois class-action lawsuit by 1.1 million Illinois smokers who claimed they were tricked into believing light cigarettes were less harmful than regular brands.

Since the case began, many other courts have denied class-action status for lawsuits filed by smokers.

The largest jury awards for individual smokers suing tobacco companies have been cut down by judges as well.

In October, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Philip Morris USA should pay $28 billion to a 45-year smoker with lung cancer. A judge later slashed the award to $28 million, saying it was “a reasonable sum.”

The previous record for a verdict won by an individual against a tobacco company was $3 billion, awarded in June 2001. A California judge later reduced that to $100 million.

The major tobacco companies settled state lawsuits over smoking-related health care costs in 1998 for a total of $246 billion.

Over time, public policy has been moving against Big Tobacco.

The World Health Organization is now pushing governments to adopt sweeping anti-smoking restrictions. Florida joined four other states that have banned smoking in most indoor workplaces and restaurants, and Arizona voters slapped smokers with a 60-cent-a-pack tax increase.