A jury just awarded a gay Florida man $157 million from tobacco companies. Here’s why it could be a landmark case.

Rintoul, 72, a Vietnam veteran, said he met Caprio in Los Angeles in the 1970s, when they worked in different departments in an advertising agency. They moved in together in 1983. “We made a commitment to each other,” Rintoul said Tuesday at his attorneys’ office in Fort Lauderdale. “We thought it would be nice to be married, just to be acknowledged as a legal couple. but we accepted our relationship as it was.”