Philip Morris Asks Court for Relief

Yesterday's case, Philip Morris v. Williams , No. 05-1256, began with a lawsuit in Oregon by Mayola Williams, the widow of Jesse Williams, a lifelong Marlboro smoker who died of lung cancer in 1997.

She alleged that the company had knowingly lied when it minimized the health risks of smoking in public statements beginning in the 1950s and stretching over four decades thereafter. Jesse Williams repeatedly referred to those statements in explaining his refusal to quit smoking.

In 1999, an Oregon jury found Philip Morris liable for fraud. It awarded Mayola Williams $821,000 in compensation and assessed the company $79.5 million in punitive damages, a ratio of punitive to compensatory damages of 97 to 1.

The Oregon Supreme Court has upheld the award, even after the Supreme Court asked it to reconsider in light of its ruling outlining a maximum punitive-compensatory ratio of 9 to 1.

"This was a massive, market-directed fraud driven by their rational and deliberate decisions at the highest levels of the company to deceive customers and knowingly endanger their health," Williams's lawyer, Robert S. Peck, said yesterday. "And so this is the misconduct Oregon is seeking to deter."

Philip Morris alleges that the trial judge violated the Constitution when he refused Philip Morris's request to bar the jury from punishing the company for harm it caused other smokers than Jesse Williams.

The jury instruction Philip Morris had proposed would have told jurors that they could "consider" the impact of the company's conduct on other smokers but not punish it.

Several justices thought the instruction was so unclear that it would not have necessarily helped Philip Morris anyway.

"I don't know how a juror is supposed to figure this out," Souter said.

Members of the court also pointed out that the instruction might have violated an Oregon law allowing jurors to assess punitive damages based on probable harm to others in the state.