(Updates to change legal ramifications in the lead.)
Jump to full article: The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, 2006-05-18
Intro: The state's highest court Thursday limited one of the tobacco industry's most successful defenses in wrongful death lawsuits, ruling the companies cannot shield themselves from liability simply by claiming that smokers acted unreasonably by lighting up when they knew cigarettes were dangerous.
The court's ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Philip Morris Inc., a unit of Altria Group (MO), by Brenda Haglund, whose husband died of lung cancer in May 2000.
The lawsuit was dismissed by a lower court judge.
But the state Supreme Judicial Court reinstated Haglund's lawsuit, ruling that a defense often used by tobacco companies cannot be used by Philip Morris in Haglund's case. The court ruled that type of defense can only be used if a reasonably safe product was used in an unreasonable way.
"Here, however, both Philip Morris and the plaintiff agree that cigarette smoking is inherently dangerous and that there is no such thing as a safe cigarette. Because no cigarette can be safely used for its ordinary purpose, smoking, there can be no nonunreasonable use of cigarettes," the court said in its unanimous, 7-0 ruling.
The court said it would not block the use of the personal choice defense in every cigarette-related case. The defense might be used when a person's behavior was "overwhelmingly unreasonable," such as when someone with emphysema decided to start smoking.
But the court said the defense, "which serves to deter unreasonable use of products in a dangerous and defective state, will, in the usual course, be inapplicable."
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