WASHINGTON — The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow the government to seek nearly $300 billion from the tobacco industry for a half-century of deception that “has cost the lives and damaged the health of untold millions of Americans.”
Both sides in a landmark, decade-long legal fight over smoking took their case to the high court Friday.
The administration, joined by public health groups, wants the court to throw out rulings that bar the government from collecting $280 billion of past tobacco profits or $14 billion for a national campaign to curb smoking.
Leading tobacco companies accounting for 90 percent of U.S. cigarette sales want the justices to wipe away court holdings that the industry illegally concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking. If they succeed, the attack on their profits also would be halted.
The filings Friday with the Supreme Court mark the latest phase in a lawsuit that began during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco maker, its parent company Altria Group Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., British American Tobacco Investments Ltd. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. filed separate but related appeals that take issue with a federal judge’s 1,600-page opinion and an appeals court ruling that found the industry engaged in racketeering and fraud over several decades.
In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the companies engaged in a scheme to defraud the public by falsely denying the adverse health effects of smoking, concealing evidence that nicotine is addictive and lying about their manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes to create addiction. A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the findings.
