Jump to full article: Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, 2009-07-26
Author: David Ress
Intro: Bullock was among the roughly four in 10 smokers who succeeded in getting a case against Henrico County-based Philip Morris USA into court and winning. Most lose on appeal, but Bullock's case still has legs, though not as the $28 billion case it once was.
Six years after her victory, and five after she succumbed to cancer, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in another Philip Morris case is sending the question of how much to punish the company back to a Los Angeles courtroom.
Not so long ago, it seemed as if the future of the tobacco industry and the tens of thousands it employs in Virginia and across the South could be decided by a multibillion-dollar verdict in any one of a score of court cases.
Now, it's not so clear.
"We continued to see a decline in the number of traditional smoking and health cases in 2008," said Murray Garnick, a senior vice president and associate general counsel at Altria Group, the Henrico County-based company that owns Philip Morris USA. "In fact, last year no [health-related] tobacco case was tried to verdict against any U.S. cigarette manufacturer."
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The one kind of case that is growing alleges Philip Morris defrauded smokers by selling "low-tar" and "lights" cigarettes, fooling them into thinking they got something they weren't. These cases aren't seeking damages for harm to health; instead, they're alleging misrepresentation that caused smokers to pay too much for their cigarettes.
The number of these so-called "lights" cases, which has jumped from 17 at the end of last year to 27 as of May -- is still less than a third of the cases alleging damages to health. Courts have rejected many of the cases, and none has reached a final disposition in favor of the plaintiffs.
Philip Morris argues the cases don't make sense, since a claim for economic damages -- basically paying too much -- doesn't make sense if the prices of "lights" and other cigarettes were the same.
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