New Hampshire Court Grants Class Certification for Plaintiffs in a Light Cigarettes Class Action Lawsuit against Philip Morris

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : November 23, 2010
Contact: Edward L. Sweda, Jr. 617-373-8462 or 857-753-9560

A New Hampshire state court on Monday granted a motion to certify a class action in a lawsuit brought under that state’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA) in the case of Lawrence et al. v. Philip Morris, USA, Inc.  The ruling makes New Hampshire the third state, after Missouri and Massachusetts, where such a class certification has been approved in a consumer-protection lawsuit against the tobacco industry’s light cigarettes scam.

Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Larry M. Smukler ruled that the plaintiffs had met all of the legal requirements for a class action under New Hampshire law.  Referring to the lawsuit which was filed on March 29, 2002, Judge Smukler ruled that “in this case, common issues of law and fact predominate over individual issues.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Attorney Chuck Douglas, who can be reached at 603-224-1988.

Edward L. Sweda, Jr., Senior Attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project, (TPLP) welcomed the court’s ruling.  “Just as courts in Missouri and Massachusetts have determined, a class action is an appropriate type of lawsuit to hold the tobacco companies accountable for their reprehensible misconduct in inflicting their light cigarette scam onto the public,” Sweda said.

In August 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the tobacco companies had violated federal anti-racketeering law.  She noted that the tobacco industry’s light cigarette scam was one of the examples of misconduct that violated the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

See the Certification Order here.

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About Mark Gottlieb

Mark Gottlieb joined the staff of the Public Health Advocacy Institute in 1993 after graduating from Northeastern University School of Law. His efforts have focused on researching tobacco litigation as a public health strategy as director of the Tobacco Products Liability Project, reducing the harm caused by secondhand tobacco smoke through a variety of legal and policy approaches, fostering scholarship using tobacco industry documents, and, more recently, examining legal and policy approaches to address obesity. He is the Executive Director of the Institute and lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and three children.