In re Light Cigarettes Marketing Practices

Various individuals from across the U.S. sought to bring class actions against two large tobacco companies, Philip Morris and Altria Group, for their marketing practices of light cigarettes.  After the cases were consolidated into one federal court for pretrial issues, the court made a ruling rejecting most of the plaintiffs’ class certification requests.  Now only four of the original plaintiffs remain.  This order rejects the companies' request to continue the consolidated cases in one court and sends those remaining claims back to their originating court to proceed based on their respective state laws.

IN RE: LIGHT CIGARETTES MARKETING SALES PRACTICES LITIGATION (D.Me., 2011)

  • United States
  • Dec 12, 2011
  • U.S. District Court District of Maine
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Parties

Plaintiff Tang et. al.

Defendant

  • Altria Group, Inc.
  • Philip Morris USA, Inc.

Legislation Cited

28 U.S.C. § 1407

Related Documents

Type of Litigation

Tobacco Control Topics

Substantive Issues

Type of Tobacco Product

None

"From this Court's perspective, the Light Cigarettes litigation has reached the point where this Court's continued oversight of the pretrial proceedings is no longer justified. There are only four remaining cases and in each, the Plaintiffs reasonably claim that the class certification issues present case-specific questions unique to the state law of their respective jurisdictions. Furthermore, the transferor courts, each of which is familiar with the state law of their respective jurisdictions, are in a better position to assess the parties' state law arguments and their impact on the class certification issue. The Court concludes that the efficiencies of consolidated handling of pretrial matters have reached the point of diminishing returns."