Illinois Appeals Court Revives $10 Billion Suit Against Philip Morris

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — A lawsuit that led to a $10.1 billion verdict against cigarette-making Philip Morris USA before it was tossed out by the Illinois Supreme Court has been revived by a lower court, sending the case back to the county once tagged as among the nation’s most lawsuit-friendly turfs.

The unanimous ruling Thursday by the three-judge panel of the Mount Vernon-based 5th District Appellate Court cleared the way for the plaintiffs to argue that a favorable 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case may be applied to reinstate the questioned Madison County one involving Philip Morris’ marketing of “light” cigarettes.

In 2003, now-retired Madison County Circuit Judge Nicholas Byron found that Philip Morris misled customers about “light” and “low tar” cigarettes and broke state law by marketing them as safer, ending a trial that both sides at the time said was the nation’s first over a lawsuit accusing a tobacco company of consumer fraud.

via Illinois Appeals Court Revives $10 Billion Suit Against Philip Morris.