United States v. Philip Morris USA, et al.

In 1999, the United States filed a lawsuit against the major cigarette manufacturers and related trade organizations alleging that defendants fraudulently misled American consumers for decades about the risks and dangers of cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke in violation of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). In 2006, the court found that defendants violated civil provisions of RICO and that there was a reasonable likelihood that defendants would continue to violate RICO in the future. On appeal, the district court’s findings were upheld, in part, vacated, in part, and remanded, in part, to the district court. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from both sides in the case in June 2010, the district court began to implement the 2006 final order.

The government filed a motion for clarification regarding defendants' obligation to disclose disaggregated marketing data under the 2006 final order. The court ordered defendants to disclose all marketing data disaggregated by geographical region, type of marketing, and any other categories of data collected or maintained on defendants' behalf and held that the Department of Justice could disclose the data to other governmental entities.

United States v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 2011 WL 1479917 (D.D.C. 2011).

  • United States
  • Apr 19, 2011
  • U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Parties

Plaintiff United States

Defendant Philip Morris, Inc.

Legislation Cited

Related Documents

Type of Litigation

Tobacco Control Topics

Substantive Issues

Type of Tobacco Product

None

"If read absolutely literally, as Defendants would do, paragraph 19 of the Final Order would preclude the Government from sharing such information with experts whose opinion they were seeking, as well as with other Government entities with an obvious interest in the data disclosed, such as the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, entities within the National Institutes of Health, law enforcement agencies, and experts in the fields of marketing, statistics, communications, and other relevant disciplines. Such a result would hamstring the Government’s ability to ensure compliance with the Final Order and to understand, verify, and interpret all data disclosed by Defendants. Finally, the purpose for requiring submission of the disaggregated marketing data, “to ensure transparency of Defendants’ marketing efforts, particularly Paragraph 16 requires submission of “all disaggregated marketing data to the 2 Government” (emphasis added). There is no suggestion that there is any restriction on dissemination within “the Government.” those directed toward youth and what effect such efforts are having,” id. at 932, would be seriously compromised."
"When the language in paragraph 16 of the Final Order is read in conjunction with the definition of the term “disaggregated marketing data” contained in both the Glossary and footnote 90, and in conjunction with the purpose to be accomplished by the requirements set forth in paragraph 16, there is no question that the Glossary defines the term “disaggregated marketing data” used in paragraph 16 of the Final Order and establishes the parameters of the Defendants’ obligation to produce such data to the Government. Defendants must therefore disclose data “broken down by type of marketing (including sales data), brand, geographical region (to the smallest level of geographic specificity maintained by each Defendant), type of promotion or marketing used, number of cigarettes sold, advertising in stores and any other category of data collected and/or maintained by or on behalf of each Defendant."