EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- -- The Illinois Supreme Court has ordered a lower-court judge to stop asking for permission to reopen a failed lawsuit against Philip Morris USA over the company's light cigarettes, effectively putting an end to the high-profile litigation, reported the Associated Press.
In the 4-2 ruling last Wednesday, the high court offered no explanation for the two-paragraph order that Madison County, Ill., Circuit Judge Nicholas Byron stop asking the state's 5th District Appellate Court whether he has authority to reopen the lawsuit.
The court's action today is entirely predictable because it quickly and quietly closes the book on a case that a majority of this court, I am sure, would rather forget, Justice Charles Freeman wrote in dissent.
In March 2003, Byron issued a $10.1 billion judgment against Altria Group Inc.'s PM USA, saying the company misled customers into believing they were buying a less-harmful cigarette. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Byron's ruling, saying the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allowed companies to characterize or label their cigarettes as light and low tar, so PM USA could not be held liable under state law even if such terms could be found false or misleading.
The U.S. Supreme Court last November let that ruling stand, and Byron dismissed the case the next month.
But since then, the attorney in that suit, Stephen Tillery of St. Louis, has argued that his original argument is supported by the U.S. solicitor general in a separate case before the nation's high court. Paul Clementthe Bush administration's top Supreme Court lawyersaid in the new case that the FTC never authorized or ordered Marlboro Lights to be labeled as lights or use the words lower tar and nicotine.
Tillery's class-action lawsuit, involving 1.1 million people who bought light cigarettes in Illinois, claimed PM USA knew when it introduced such cigarettes in 1971 that they were no healthier than regular cigarettes. But the company hid that information and the fact that light cigarettes actually had a more toxic form of tar, the lawsuit claimed.
William Ohlemeyer, PM USA's vice president and associate general counsel, issued a one-sentence statement: Philip Morris USA believes the Illinois Supreme Court reached the right result.
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