Tobacco Ads Class Action Proceeds
admin | May 21, 2009
The state supreme court of California ruled on Monday, by a 4-3 decision, that consumers can sue as a group over ads they contend misled them.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
“This gives the consumers rights to protect themselves from fraudulent advertising,” said Mark Robinson, a lawyer for the smokers who sued tobacco companies in 1997.
The ruling could make California “the class-action capital of the country,” retorted William Stern, a lawyer for business organizations and a co-author of Proposition 64, a 2004 ballot measure at the heart of the case.
The suit accused the companies of waging a long advertising campaign that concealed cigarettes’ addictive and harmful effects. Unlike individual suits over illnesses allegedly caused by tobacco company deception, the current suit seeks reimbursement of money spent by every Californian who bought cigarettes during the period covered by the case: June 10, 1993, to April 23, 2001.
Read the full story here: Class-action lawsuit over tobacco ads proceeds
There are loud arguments coming from both sides of this one within the legal community.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Moreno said the ballot materials for the initiative showed it was intended only to stop “shakedown” lawsuits against businesses. The initiative followed a scandal in which lawyers threatened to sue or sued small businesses for obscure code violations and then pocketed the money the businesses paid to make the suits go away. Some lawyers later lost their licenses as a result of this practice.
“It is clear that the proponents did not intend to eliminate … actions to protect Californians from unfair business practices,” Moreno wrote.
Justice Marvin Baxter, in a dissent, argued that every member of a class action should be required to prove that he or she relied on the allegedly deceptive advertising when they purchased cigarettes, a requirement that trial lawyers argued would be impossible to meet.
“Even if the majority’s holding has some sympathetic appeal on the particular facts alleged here,” Baxter wrote, “the rule the majority announces will apply equally to less egregious cases, where it invites the very kinds of mischief Proposition 64 was intended to curtail.”
Read the full story here: California Supreme Court revives class-action suit against tobacco firms
Related Posts:
Filed Under: Class Actions
