Cal. Supreme Court Paves Way for Class Action Suits Against Big Tobacco

California consumers can file class-action lawsuits against big tobacco, despite limits state voters placed on the type of litigation in 2004, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled.

The important ruling from the state’s highest court breathes new life into a class action suit California smokers had filed in 1997 against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and other tobacco industry firms, claiming cigarette makers and advertising agencies used deceptive advertising to lure them and falsely claimed that some brands of cigarettes were safer than others.

Lower state courts had held that the suit was barred by Proposition 64, the statewide initiative that limited lawsuits filed under a prominent consumer rights’ law by requiring they be brought by people who lost money or property as a result of the company’s wrongful conduct. That court-interpreted requirement had effectively snuffed out the California class-action suit against big tobacco.

But in a ruling that finds a relaxed view of Prop. 64’s standing rules, the Supreme Court found that in passing the law, state voters “did not intend to eliminate … actions to protect Californians from unfair business practices.”

The court issued a 4-3 ruling, which overcame dissent from justices who wanted to leave in place the strict interpretation of the Prop. 64 standing rules. The ruling reversed lower court rulings and was the high court’s most significant interpretation of Prop. 64.

Suits vs. Big Tobacco

In recent years, smokers and relatives of smokers have brought individual lawsuits and massive class-action suits on behalf of thousands of plaintiffs against big tobacco for false or misleading advertising and for allegedly covering up their knowledge of the addictive properties of nicotine.

In February 2009, the first of roughly 8,000 suits filed against big tobacco in Florida courts reached a jury. In 2006, a judge had dismissed the record-setting $145 billion award that had been ordered for a class of thousands of smokers and their families. The suits are now expected to move forward individually rather than as a class.

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