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- <text id=90TT0132>
- <title>
- Jan. 15, 1990: Business Notes:Litigation
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Jan. 15, 1990 Antarctica
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 49
- Business Notes
- LITIGATION
- Stubbed, but Not Out
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Anti-tobacco forces cheered in 1988 when a federal court in
- Newark ruled for the first time that a cigarette manufacturer
- could be held liable for the death of a smoker. The court
- awarded $400,000 to the widowed husband of Rose Cipollone, who
- died of cancer in 1984 at 58. But last week a federal appeals
- court in Philadelphia threw out the landmark verdict, ruling
- that the lower court erred by excluding certain lines of
- questioning that might have favored the tobacco company.
- </p>
- <p> The Cipollone family and other would-be plaintiffs may find
- some encouragement in the latest decision. The lower-court
- ruling was rather narrow, declaring that the Liggett Group,
- which made the Chesterfield and L&M cigarettes Cipollone
- favored, violated a so-called express warranty that its
- products are safe. But the appeals court opened the way to a
- new trial on the broader question of whether the tobacco
- company was negligent in marketing cigarettes when it knew of
- medical evidence suggesting that smoking is hazardous.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-