State Supreme Court's 4-3 decision involving a deceptive advertising case surprises those who thought Prop. 64 had essentially ended consumer lawsuits.
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2009-05-19
Author: Maura Dolan
Intro: The California Supreme Court revived a major class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry Monday, ruling that smokers could hold it accountable for alleged deceptive advertising.
After years of consumer cases meeting their demise in lower courts, the state high court's 4-3 decision helped resuscitate a key consumer law that voters sharply limited in 2004 in the wake of lawsuit scandals.
Justice Carlos R. Moreno, writing for the majority, said Proposition 64 was intended to stop "shakedown" lawsuits that enriched only lawyers and "did not propose to curb" genuine consumer grievances.
The decision, the court's most significant interpretation of Proposition 64, was a departure from many lower court rulings that interpreted the measure as having broader sweep.
Trial lawyers called the ruling a major consumer victory, while corporate litigators predicted a flood of frivolous lawsuits and accused the court of ignoring voters.
The case against the tobacco industry, which lower courts had dismissed, charges the industry with luring people to smoke with deceptive ads about cigarette safety. . . .
The court's three most conservative justices dissented, arguing that the majority ruling invited "mischief" and frivolous lawsuits that Proposition 64 was designed to halt.
The ruling will be applied "not only to the unsympathetic facts alleged in the case -- i.e., that larger tobacco companies lured consumers into nicotine addiction by falsely claiming over many years that cigarettes were safe -- but also to myriad situations in which the anti-consumer implications are far less dire," wrote Justice Marvin R. Baxter, joined by Justices Ming W. Chin and Carol A. Corrigan.
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