Case seeking cancer screenings for smokers heads to federal court

Associated Press

BOSTON

A decade after a group of smokers from Massachusetts sued Philip Morris USA to try to force the cigarette maker to pay for lung cancer screenings, the case finally will be heard by a jury.

Smokers in the class-action lawsuit allege Philip Morris manufactured a defective cigarette knowing it could have made a safer product with fewer carcinogens. The closely watched case heads to trial this week in federal court in Boston.

They are not seeking money, but instead want to compel Philip Morris to pay for highly detailed, three-dimensional chest scans that can detect signs of early-stage lung cancer that may be too small to show up on traditional X-rays.

The jury will be asked to decide whether Philip Morris made Marlboro cigarettes that are unreasonably dangerous. If the jury finds in favor of the smokers, a second phase will take place to determine how a medical monitoring program will be administered.

No smokers are expected to testify during the first phase. Instead, it will be a trial of dueling experts.

The plaintiffs plan to call a former Philip Morris employee to testify that feasible alternative designs of Marlboros have existed for decades. They also plan to call a psychologist who will testify that given a choice between Marlboros or a safer cigarette, a nonaddicted, informed person would choose the safer alternative.

Philip Morris is expected to call experts in cigarette design and marketing who are likely to testify that the company’s lower-tar and lower-nicotine cigarettes – on the market since the late 1970s – have failed to gain a significant market share among any group of smoker.

Richard Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern University and anti-smoking activist, said past lawsuits seeking to force tobacco companies to provide medical monitoring have failed. But Daynard said he believes the Massachusetts case has a stronger chance of succeeding because recent studies have found that the sophisticated screening can save lives.