Originally published October 24 2005
Supreme Court refuses to hear government's tobacco plea case
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
After the Supreme Court refused the appeal of the government, the civil lawsuit will receive a ruling from Judge Gladys Kessler regarding the tobacco companies' liability.
The Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear an appeal of a decision that sharply limited the money the tobacco industry can be required to pay if the government prevails in its claim that the industry has been run as a "racketeering enterprise" that falsely promoted its product as harmless.
Judge Gladys Kessler is expected to rule in the coming months on the tobacco companies' liability and, if she finds them liable, on the remedy to which the government is entitled.
The government filed its lawsuit in 1999 seeking to recoup what it considered to be the tobacco industry's ill-gotten gains, estimated at $280 billion.
But in February of this year, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the law known as RICO that is the basis for the lawsuit, does not permit the "backward-looking remedy" of disgorging illegally obtained proceeds.
But the tobacco industry had argued that it would be a waste of judicial resources to decide the remedy issue in advance of an actual verdict on liability.
The government can bring the issue back to the Supreme Court on appeal after a final judgment in the case.
The government's legal theory is that the tobacco industry has used mail fraud and wire fraud to perpetrate a deception lasting decades about the nature of its products.
The solicitor general's office told the Supreme Court that the usual caution against deciding an appeal before a case has concluded should not apply in this instance.
Immediate review was important, the government's brief said, because as the case goes forward without it, Kessler will be required "to fashion a remedy based on fundamentally mistaken principles of law."
The case is United States vs. Philip Morris USA Inc., No. 05-92.
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