WASHINGTON -- The tobacco industry lost a U.S. Supreme Court bid aimed at limiting damage awards in more than 700 West Virginia lawsuits filed by smokers who say cigarettes gave them cancer and other diseases, according to Bloomberg.
The justices, without comment, on Monday left intact a trial plan that Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris USA unit and other cigarette makers said will lead to unconstitutional awards of punitive damages. The approach calls for a jury to consider common issues, including the availability of punitive damages, before separate trials are held on individual cases.[image-nocss]
"Defense counsel will be wholly unable to defend against plaintiffs' amorphous claim for punitive damages," the cigarette makers argued in their unsuccessful appeal, filed in Washington. In addition to Philip Morris, Reynolds America Inc.'s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Loews Corp.'s Lorillard Tobacco Co. urged the Supreme Court to intervene.
The rejection clears the way for sick smokers to seek millions, if not billions, of dollars in damages. Lawyers for the smokers say the trial plan is a valid way to ensure that claims against cigarette makers can move forward quickly.
"An inefficient trial plan would practically deny a substantial portion of these terminally ill plaintiffs their day in court," lawyers for the West Virginia smokers argued in court papers. The first phase of the case is scheduled to go to trial March 18, according to court papers.
Under the West Virginia trial plan, the first jury will determine liability questions that affect all the defendants. That same jury also will decide whether punitive damages are appropriate and, if so, establish a "multiplier" that would be used to assess punitive damages once compensatory damages are measured for each smoker.
West Virginia's highest court, known as the Supreme Court of Appeals, in November refused to question the trial plan. In 2005, that court rejected the tobacco industry's contention that the approach was unconstitutional under a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In their latest appeal, the tobacco companies pointed to that ruling and a 2007 decision in another Supreme Court case involving Philip Morris. Those decisions establish that "punishment must be narrowly focused on the defendant's conduct toward the plaintiff," the appeal argued. The smokers' lawyers said the 2007 decision made clear that juries can consider the impact of a defendant's conduct on other people.
"Philip Morris admitted and this court held that evidence of harm to others is relevant to the determination of a punitive damages multiplier," they argued. The smokers' lawyers also argued that Supreme Court review would be premature, given that no punitive damages can be awarded until juries consider individual cases in the second phase of the trial plan.
The case is Philip Morris v. Accord.
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