Smokers Fight Switch to Federal Court

The tobacco industry is trying to manipulate the court system and should be fined $38 million a day for moving the first smokers’ class-action case to federal court, smokers’ attorneys said. Switching to federal court after a two-year state trial “would make a mockery of nearly a decade of litigation,” attorneys for an estimated 500,000 sick Florida smokers said in a motion to send the case back. Mike York, a lawyer for Philip Morris Inc., had no response to the request for sanctions, saying the industry would respond to the motion in court. Tobacco’s legal maneuver to change courts after losing a record $145-billion punitive damage verdict “transcends canons of ethics, good lawyering and basic decency,” the smokers’ motion said. Plaintiffs’ attorneys proposed punishing the industry by fining the five biggest cigarette makers $38 million a day--the amount of interest they say is lost each day by delaying the signing of a final judgment.