Jump to full article: Bangor (ME) Daily News, 2010-03-10
Author: Judy Harrison BDN Staff
Intro: A lawsuit over the marketing of light cigarettes could be headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal judge denied a motion to apply facts found in a previous case to the current one.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock said in a 16-page decision issued Friday that it would not be fair to the litigants to apply the facts found by a judge in a jury-waived criminal trial in a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against tobacco companies to the potential class-action civil suit.
The lawsuit contends smokers of Marlboro Lights, Virginia Slims Lights and other light cigarettes were misled into thinking that the cigarettes contained less tar and nicotine than regular cigarettes.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, who live all over the country, had asked Woodcock to apply the doctrine of collateral estoppel to the current case and adopt the facts found in the 2005 verdict in which a federal judge in Washington, D.C., concluded cigarette makers had violated racketeering statutes.
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