Tobacco Cos. Ask Supreme Court to Review Engle Class Action Ruling

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Several major tobacco companies have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that their rights to due process were violated when Class Members were permitted to use findings from the landmark class action lawsuit to pursue individual personal injury lawsuits.

Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. launched 10 petitions to the nation’s high court, asking the justices to reevaluate the 2006 Engle v. Liggett Group Inc. decision by the Florida Supreme Court, which denied certification of the class action lawsuit and put an end to a $145 billion verdict. However, the court allowed the putative Class Members to file individual lawsuits against the tobacco companies and use the Engle jury’s liability findings. Subsequently, thousands of individual personal injury lawsuits were filed against the tobacco companies.

The Engle jury found that smoking cigarettes caused diseases, including lung cancer, and that the cigarette manufacturers concealed the health risks of smoking from consumers. The jurors also found that cigarette manufacturers sold nicotine cigarettes that were defective and unreasonably dangerous.

In the R.J. Reynolds v. Walker petition to the Supreme Court, R.J. Reynolds argues that the thousands of personal injury lawsuits that were filed following the Florida Supreme Court’s Engle decision “are the aftermath of a massive and misguided class action in which six Florida residents attempted to litigate the tort claims of thousands of individuals who smoked myriad brands of cigarettes over a period spanning half a century.” R.J. Reynolds further argues that the class was decertified because the court realized there was no way to litigate the individual claims on a classwide basis.

“Rather than discarding the generic findings that this flawed proceeding produced, however, the Florida Supreme Court declared them entitled to ‘res judicata effect’ in subsequent cases brought by individual Class Members,” R.J. Reynolds continued. “That cryptic statement has bedeviled courts ever since, as they have struggled in vain to devise a way to devise a way to give preclusive effect to those findings without violating the Engle defendants’ due process rights.”

In October 2013, Liggett Group LLC agreed to a class action settlement that would pay $110 million to Florida Class Members. In exchange, nearly 5,000 individual plaintiffs from the Engle class action lawsuit agreed to release their pending personal injury and wrongful death claims.

A Florida appeals court ruled on Dec. 31, 2013 that the Engle decision did not nullify opt-out notices, and that the statute of limitations had passed, barring those who opted out of the litigation from filing personal injury lawsuits against the tobacco companies.

The tobacco companies claim they have been subjected to verdicts from class action lawsuits and individual lawsuits that already total more than $500 million. They are currently faced with thousands of lawsuits nationwide related to the marketing and sale of nicotine cigarettes and are fighting tenaciously to avoid liability. The Florida rulings so far have been favorable to plaintiffs who claim they were harmed by the tobacco companies’ marketing and sale of cigarettes, and may set the tone for current litigation that is pending across the United States.

The cases are Philip Morris USA Inc. v. Barbanell, Case No. 13-1180; Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Mrozek, Case No. 13-1185; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Mack, Case No. 13-1186; R.J. Reynolds v. Brown, Case No. 13-1187; R.J. Reynolds v. Kirkland, Case No. 13-1188; R.J. Reynolds v. Koballa, Case No. 13-1189; R.J. Reynolds v. Smith, Case No. 13-1190; R.J. Reynolds v. Townsend, Case No. 13-1191; R.J. Reynolds v. Sury, Case No. 13-1192; and R.J. Reynolds v. Walker, Case No. 13-1193, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court ruled June 9, 2014, that it will not review the landmark Engle decision.