Jury rules Philip Morris won’t have to cover chest CT scans for smokers
February 12, 2016
By Gail Kalinoski, Contributing Reporter
Philip Morris USA won’t have to pay for annual chest scans after a 10-person jury in Boston unanimously rejected claims made in a federal class action lawsuit against the tobacco giant, seeking a court-ordered medical monitoring program for currently healthy smokers of Marlboro cigarettes.
The jury rejected the claim made in the 10-year-old case that Marlboros were defective and “unreasonably dangerous.” The plaintiffs claimed that the cigarettes could have been manufactured with fewer carcinogens to make them safer. The lawsuit, the third of its kind to go to trial and filed on behalf of tens of thousands of smokers, was pushing for Philip Morris to pay for annual low-dose computer tomography (LDCT) scans that can pick up early signs of lung cancer and reportedly lower the risk of lung cancer by as much as 20 percent, according to topclassactions.com.
The scans cost about $500 per test and would have required Philip Morris to pay out about $5 million each year to test roughly 10,000 smokers, the legal web site noted. Those seeking to be covered had to be at least 50 years old, have purchased Marlboros in Massachusetts and have smoked at least a pack a day, Bloomberg reported.
The Bloomberg story noted that in his closing argument, plaintiff attorney Kevin T. Peters told the jury, “You’re about to deliberate about the most dangerous consumer product ever invented. It’s a product intended to addict its users and intended to addict children.”
The attorneys for PM USA stated the product wasn’t defective and smokers knew the hazards of smoking. They also claimed that government regulators have never found Marlboros to be more dangerous than other cigarette brands, according to the Bloomberg report.
After the verdict, PM USA issued a press release saying the plaintiffs failed to persuade the jury that Marlboro cigarettes were defective.
“Today’s unanimous verdict again demonstrates that these types of medical monitoring claims are meritless. The jury soundly rejected that Marlboro cigarettes are defectively designed,” Murray Garnick, Altria Client Services senior vice president and associate general counsel, said on behalf of PM USA. “This was the third case of its kind to go to trial, and in each the jury ruled in favor of Philip Morris USA.”
Most states do not allow medical monitoring lawsuits, but PM USA, a unit of Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group, Inc., noted that it won two similar trials in Louisiana and West Virginia in the early 2000s. The company said most federal and state courts have rejected class action suits, including those seeking medical monitoring for plaintiffs, because the “claims raise issues unique to each individual smoker.”
The Boston case was unusual because the plaintiffs currently have no symptoms of lung cancer and were seeking medical monitoring programs, not damages. If the jury had found that PM USA made a defective product and backed the claim that LDCT scans were an effective way to monitor for cancer, the judge would have heard a second phase of the trial about medical monitoring, according to Bloomberg.
Boston magazine noted that when the judge had ruled the case could go forward in 2010 many health insurance plans did not cover the scans the plaintiffs were seeking. But more plans, including Medicare, have now begun to offer coverage of them, the magazine stated.
Meanwhile, more court proceedings are expected in Boston, where the judge is expected to decide whether there was a violation of Massachusetts’ Consumer Protection Act, according to PM USA.
Philip Morris USA won’t have to pay for annual chest scans after a 10-person jury in Boston unanimously rejected claims made in a federal class action lawsuit against the tobacco giant, seeking a court-ordered medical monitoring program for currently healthy smokers of Marlboro cigarettes.
The jury rejected the claim made in the 10-year-old case that Marlboros were defective and “unreasonably dangerous.” The plaintiffs claimed that the cigarettes could have been manufactured with fewer carcinogens to make them safer. The lawsuit, the third of its kind to go to trial and filed on behalf of tens of thousands of smokers, was pushing for Philip Morris to pay for annual low-dose computer tomography (LDCT) scans that can pick up early signs of lung cancer and reportedly lower the risk of lung cancer by as much as 20 percent, according to topclassactions.com.
The scans cost about $500 per test and would have required Philip Morris to pay out about $5 million each year to test roughly 10,000 smokers, the legal web site noted. Those seeking to be covered had to be at least 50 years old, have purchased Marlboros in Massachusetts and have smoked at least a pack a day, Bloomberg reported.
The Bloomberg story noted that in his closing argument, plaintiff attorney Kevin T. Peters told the jury, “You’re about to deliberate about the most dangerous consumer product ever invented. It’s a product intended to addict its users and intended to addict children.”
The attorneys for PM USA stated the product wasn’t defective and smokers knew the hazards of smoking. They also claimed that government regulators have never found Marlboros to be more dangerous than other cigarette brands, according to the Bloomberg report.
After the verdict, PM USA issued a press release saying the plaintiffs failed to persuade the jury that Marlboro cigarettes were defective.
“Today’s unanimous verdict again demonstrates that these types of medical monitoring claims are meritless. The jury soundly rejected that Marlboro cigarettes are defectively designed,” Murray Garnick, Altria Client Services senior vice president and associate general counsel, said on behalf of PM USA. “This was the third case of its kind to go to trial, and in each the jury ruled in favor of Philip Morris USA.”
Most states do not allow medical monitoring lawsuits, but PM USA, a unit of Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group, Inc., noted that it won two similar trials in Louisiana and West Virginia in the early 2000s. The company said most federal and state courts have rejected class action suits, including those seeking medical monitoring for plaintiffs, because the “claims raise issues unique to each individual smoker.”
The Boston case was unusual because the plaintiffs currently have no symptoms of lung cancer and were seeking medical monitoring programs, not damages. If the jury had found that PM USA made a defective product and backed the claim that LDCT scans were an effective way to monitor for cancer, the judge would have heard a second phase of the trial about medical monitoring, according to Bloomberg.
Boston magazine noted that when the judge had ruled the case could go forward in 2010 many health insurance plans did not cover the scans the plaintiffs were seeking. But more plans, including Medicare, have now begun to offer coverage of them, the magazine stated.
Meanwhile, more court proceedings are expected in Boston, where the judge is expected to decide whether there was a violation of Massachusetts’ Consumer Protection Act, according to PM USA.