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Oregon justices side with tobacco companies 

The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday let a lower court ruling stand, rejecting a class action lawsuit seeking to force tobacco companies to pay the medical monitoring bills of smokers.

The lawsuit sought to force the nation's five biggest tobacco companies to pay for healthcare expenses for up to 400,000 Oregonians by paying for such things as tests to detect lung cancer, emphysema and other diseases attributed to smoking. . . .

"Oregon law has long recognized that the fact that a defendant's negligence poses a threat of future physical harm is not sufficient, standing alone, to constitute an actionable injury," Justice Rives Kistler wrote for the court.

"As this court has explained, 'the threat of future harm, by itself, is insufficient as an allegation of damage in the context of a negligence claim,'" he wrote.

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