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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Judge Rejects Tobacco Group's Plea for Dismissal from Federal
Racketeering
Case [04/08-2]
Excerpts from: Judge won't dismiss US charges against Liggett
Yahoo News [04/07/04]
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a plea by tobacco maker Liggett Group to remove the company from the government's $289 billion racketeering suit against the industry.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler turned down Liggett's argument that the charges against the company should be dismissed from the case because the company broke ranks with the rest of the industry in 1997 and cooperated with government investigators
Kessler said the charges against Liggett should move ahead, noting that the government contends that Liggett still has not "come clean" because it "continues to assert that there never was a (racketeering) conspiracy and that if there was, it never participated in it."
The government has brought claims against Philip Morris USA and its parent, Altria Group Inc. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the main unit of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc., Loews Corp.'s Lorillard Tobacco unit, Carolina Group, British American Tobacco Plc's, Brown & Williamson Tobacco unit, and Liggett Group.
The case is due to go to trial in September.
The government accuses tobacco companies of intentionally and willfully misleading the American public. It says the companies long denied that smoking caused disease and made misleading statements about the addictiveness of nicotine.
Tobacco companies counter that the government itself knew of the relationship between smoking and disease. They also argue that the government never said nicotine was "addictive" until the Surgeon General changed the definition of addiction.
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