Supreme Court refused to revive lawsuit
05/17/99
The Supreme Court today refused to revive a lawsuit against the tobacco industry by six smokers from Pennsylvania.
The court, without comment, turned away the smokers' argument that their case should be certified as a class action on behalf of all smokers in the state. A federal judge threw out the case and an appeals court upheld the dismissal. The 1996 lawsuit had sought to represent the claims of about 1 million Pennsylvania smokers who began lighting up as teenagers. Instead of asking for money, the lawsuit demanded that the tobacco companies provide medical monitoring for the smokers. U.S. District Judge Clarence Newcomer certified the case as a class action in August 1997. But just weeks before the trial was to begin the following October, the judge decertified the class action on grounds there were too many individual issues
Cigarettes
