Smokers watch out: the Supreme Court announced on Friday it will decide whether consumers will be able to sue tobacco companies for allegedly not being warned of the dangers of the product. According to drug and cigarette makers, as long as the Food and Drug Administration approved their products and they come with a warning label, a lawsuit against them should not be taken into consideration on such claims.
Six cases are to be considered by the Supreme Court this year, including Wyeth, Medtronic Inc., Pfizer’s Warner-Lambert unit and Philip Morris USA. In the first case, the drug company has been sued for $6.8 million by a woman in Vermont, after being injected with Phenergan, an antinausea drug. Unfortunately for her, the injection punctured one of her arteries, which later led to gangrene and the loss of her hand and forearm. But the drug maker says the label did mention negative effects if injecting the drug into an artery.
Philip Morris on the other hand received complains that the Marlboro Lights commercial deceive its consumers by giving the impression they are healthier than other cigarettes. The lawsuit was filed by three longtime smokers in Maine, but they are not the only ones, as dozens of similar lawsuits are pending across the United States. According to company representatives, such claims should not be taken into consideration as the cigarettes labels clearly warn on the effects of smoking.
The Supreme Court will take into consideration the drug and cigarette makers’ appeals, whose lawsuits are based on a face-to-face confrontation of laws that aim at protecting the consumers, and federal regulations, that approve the use of the products on the market. Such companies get sued every year for millions of dollars by consumers who claim they have been mislead into using the product, and there have been cases when the plaintiffs won significant sums of money.