A US appeal court gave the tobacco industry a pair of victories today by dismissing separate lawsuits by foreign governments and by several union health funds alleging fraud and racketeering violations.
The unanimous three-judge appellate panel said in a opinion written by Judge Judith Rogers the claims were too remote, contingent, derivative and indirect to survive.
The ruling dismissed the lawsuit by the union health funds, which sought to force the tobacco industry to reimburse them for funds spent on the medical treatment of individual smokers.
It said seven other appeals courts have considered similar lawsuits and have rejected them on the grounds the health funds were not directly injured by the cigarette-makers. The appeals court said a federal trial judge had been wrong in allowing the lawsuit to go forward.
In the other case the appeals court said a trial judge had been correct in ruling Guatemala's alleged injuries were too remote to have been caused by the misconduct of the various tobacco companies. The judge later dismissed similar lawsuits by Nicaragua and Ukraine.
The Guatemalan suit named Philip Morris Cos Inc, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes; a group of companies affiliated with the British American Tobacco Plc; two companies affiliated with Vector Group Ltd's Liggett Group Inc; and the tobacco industry's public relations and research organisations.
The legal action sought unspecified damages under US racketeering laws. Guatemala claimed it incurred unnecessarily high health-care costs between 1973 and 1997 because it was misled by the defendants about the health risks associated with smoking.
The union health funds sued Philip Morris, other tobacco firms and other entities related to the tobacco industry, alleging a fraudulent scheme to preserve their control of the cigarette market.
They alleged the tobacco firms engaged in a scheme to avoid the costs of treating smoking-related diseases by counteracting smokers' efforts to quit and by impairing the ability of health-care providers to reduce costs through effective smoking cessation programmes and safer cigarettes.