State Court to Issue Rulings on Tobacco Suits

The state Supreme Court today is expected to issue a pair of rulings with enormous implications for tobacco companies and people suing them over smoking-related diseases. The rulings could determine whether cigarette makers will be buried in liability claims in California, or if the growing threat from hostile juries will evaporate.

In California, the industry has suffered three consecutive multi-million-dollar defeats at the hands of lung cancer victims since a 10-year-old ban on anti-tobacco lawsuits was lifted by state lawmakers in 1998. The plaintiffs won because juries reacted with anger to internal documents suggesting cigarette makers had carried out a decades-long campaign to conceal the risks and addictiveness of smoking.

But the industry contends that the documents, produced mainly from the 1950s through mid-1990s, were inadmissible because the companies were immune to lawsuits until 1998.

Directly at issue in today’s rulings will be the future of two cases--Myers vs. Philip Morris and Naegele vs. R.J. Reynolds--that were dismissed before trial because of the immunity law. In deciding if, and exactly when, the immunity applied, the justices will determine if those two claims can go forward.

More important, however, they also will decide whether incriminating documents from past decades can be introduced at trial.

If the answer is yes, cigarette makers are likely to face a flood of new lawsuits and potential liability in the billions of dollars. If the answer is no, the three plaintiffs’ victories would almost certainly be reversed, and the litigation could dry up.

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Myron Levin