Cigarette manufacturer asks Supreme Court to overturn rackeetering ruling

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Cigarette manufacturer asks Supreme Court to overturn rackeetering ruling

February 19, 2010 02:45:00 pm

[JURIST] Cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA [corporate website] on Friday asked [cert. petition, PDF] the US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] to overturn a 2006 district court ruling [JURIST report] that held the tobacco industry [JURIST news archive] liable under civil racketeering laws for deceiving American consumers as to the health effects of their products. Philip Morris argued that the trial court's decision did not properly consider issues involving the First Amendment [text] and that the government's application of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) [18 USC § 1961–1968] was overbroad. The company gave its reasoning for the appeal:

The government's use of injunctive litigation to obtain regulatory authority that it had been unable to secure through the legislative and administrative processes upended the First Amendment, distorted RICO beyond recognition, and vastly exceeded the remedial authority of Article III courts. Absent further review, the government will henceforth be free to pervert RICO into a device for evading the legislative process, penalizing and chilling public debate on scientific matters, and constraining constitutionally protected speech through vague and sweeping injunctions. And, the government will be able to do so without significant procedural protections beyond the findings of a single judge.

Altria Group [corporate website], Philip Morris' parent company, also filed a petition [cert. petition, PDF] in the case. Additionally on Friday, the Obama administration submitted a petition [cert. petition, PDF] in the case seeking to overturn a federal appeals court ruling [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that the government could not seek a $280 billion penalty against the companies for past profits and limited relief to prevention of future violations.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [official website] affirmed [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] the district court ruling in May. The US brought the initial action under RICO, which criminalizes the conduction or participation in the affairs of an enterprise that affects interstate or foreign commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity. The ruling required tobacco manufacturers to issue public statements to correct messages it had put out denying the health hazards of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking, the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the manufacturers' manipulation of cigarette design to ensure optimum nicotine delivery. The companies were also required to cease using any express or implied health terminology such as "light" or "low tar." While the appellate court affirmed many of the district court's remedial injunctions, it rejected a remedy that would have required tobacco manufacturers to effectively force retailers to display large freestanding displays to convey the corrective messages, reasoning that the district court did not consider the rights of innocent persons as required [18 USC § 1964] by RICO.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.