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Massachusetts court strikes a blow to tobacco defense
The state's highest court on Thursday rejected one of the U.S. tobacco industry's most successful defenses in wrongful death lawsuits, ruling the companies cannot shield themselves from liability simply by claiming that smokers should know cigarettes are dangerous. The ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Philip Morris Inc. by Brenda Haglund, whose husband died of lung cancer in May 2000. The lawsuit was dismissed by a lower court judge. But the state Supreme Judicial Court reinstated Haglund's suit, ruling that the so-called "personal choice defense" often used by tobacco companies cannot be used by Philip Morris in Haglund's case. The court ruled that type of defense can only be used if a reasonably safe product was used in an unreasonable way. "Here, however, both Philip Morris and the plaintiff agree that cigarette smoking is inherently dangerous and that there is no such thing as a safe cigarette. Because no cigarette can be safely used for its ordinary purpose, smoking, there can be no nonunreasonable use of cigarettes," the court said in its unanimous, 7-0 ruling. … Richard Daynard, a Northeastern University law professor, said the ruling could have broad implications. "It's an extremely important decision. I think it's the first time that any court in the country has squarely held that as a matter of law, except in extraordinary and unlikely cases, this (personal choice) defense cannot be used," Daynard said. "It eliminates the argument in Massachusetts that an ordinary consumer of cigarettes cannot sue a tobacco company because the ordinary consumer knew that there was something wrong with the product," said Daynard, director of Northeastern's Tobacco Control Resource Center, which provides tobacco policy information to government officials and public health advocates.
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