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$200 Billion suit against Big Tobacco gets OK

Posted on Sep 26, 2006

$200B suit against Big Tobacco gets OK BY JOHN MARZULLI and CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Lisa Daglian of American Cancer Society cheers judge's ruling. Up to 60 million light-cigarette smokers - including thousands of New Yorkers - were given the go-ahead to take a $200 billion class action lawsuit against Big Tobacco to trial. That means anyone who bought cigarettes that were labeled "light" or "lights" after they were put on the market in the early 1970s can join the suit in Brooklyn Federal Court. "It's an extremely significant ruling," said lead lawyer Michael Hausfeld. "They understood they were selling death." Former light-cigarette smokers such as Lisa Daglian of Manhattan hailed the ruling. "I first started with Malboro reds before I switched to Marlboro Lights," said Daglian, 44, who kicked the habit four years ago and now works for the American Cancer Society. "I always knew cigarettes were bad, but the light cigarettes gave me a false sense of security." The Schwab case, named after lead plaintiff Barbara Schwab of upstate New York, was filed in 2004. "This case involves thousands of New Yorkers," said Deborah Schwartz, spokeswoman for Hausfeld's Washington-based law firm. It alleges that cigarette makers promoted light cigarettes as a lower-risk alternative to regular smokes - even though their own internal documents showed they knew the risks were about the same. Hausfeld said more than 90% of the people involved in the suit chose to smoke light cigarettes because of health factors - not because they tasted better. In his 540-page ruling, Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein called the case "vexing" but ruled that a jury should decide whether tobacco companies duped smokers into buying light cigarettes. Weinstein, who set a Jan. 22 trial date, also compared what may be one of the largest class action suits in history to a "pointillist painting by Georges Seurat." "When a juror stands back from the canvas and looks at the big picture, he or she may well discern clearly enough an industry based on fraud and coverup that has taken more than half a century to begin to admit its subtle lies to the public designed to sell its product," he wrote. But tobacco company lawyers painted a different picture, saying the lawsuit relied on flawed data and should not be certified as a class action. David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, said that without surveying each smoker in the suit, it would be impossible to determine their motives for buying light cigarettes. "There are too many individual factors in this type of case that it would be impossible to certify it as a class," he said. We will "seek a stay of all trial court proceedings pending a decision by the appellate court," added William Ohlemeyer, a vice president for Philip Morris USA. That strategy worked for Big Tobacco last year when the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Weinstein's decision in a 2002 case to certify the first-ever nationwide class action against tobacco companies. The panel ruled Weinstein stretched the boundaries of the law by allowing the plaintiffs to seek only punitive damages.