In Court, Philip Morris Uses Civil-Rights Smokescreen

Philip Morris has cast itself as a civil-rights victim being denied due process, Stephanie Mencimer writes for Mother Jones. The tobacco giant, ordered by an Oregon jury in 1999 to pay $79 million in punitive damages to a woman whose husband died of lung cancer, has been fighting the award ever since, taking its case to the US Supreme Court three times.

The high court twice urged Oregon to lower the award but has been ignored. After the Oregon’s court latest maneuver sidestepping the order, Philip Morris likened its plight to that of the NAACP in a 1958 case in Alabama. The widow’s attorney called the strategy “brazen,” but she now faces a Supreme Court potentially irked at its snub from a lower court. (More US Supreme Court stories.)