Fontaine v. Philip Morris USA
A landmark products liability verdict illustrating the safer alternative design argument in tobacco litigation.
Tobacco industry executives take the oath before Congress - a pivotal moment in decades of litigation over what the industry knew and when.
In the Fontaine case, Legal-eze supported us at every stage from discovery through closing arguments. With Robert at counsel table and the Legal-eze team assisting remotely, it felt like having a full trial team to match opposing counsel, and their experience helped us secure justice for a deserving client. We don't go to trial without Legal-eze.
Barbara Fontaine smoked cigarettes for more than four decades. She developed fatal lung cancer. Her husband, Armand Fontaine, brought suit against Philip Morris USA, asserting that the company's decades-long campaign to conceal the dangers of smoking - and its deliberate choice to continue manufacturing cigarettes with dangerously high nicotine levels - caused his wife's death.
At the heart of the plaintiff's case was a products liability theory built on three feasible safer designs that Philip Morris had the ability to implement but chose not to:
- Reduced or eliminated inhalation. The manufacturers had the ability to design cigarettes that significantly reduced or eliminated the inhalation of smoke into the lungs - directly addressing the primary pathway for lung cancer causation.
- Heat-not-burn technology. Products that heat tobacco rather than burn it dramatically reduce the production of carcinogens. This technology was known and feasible. Philip Morris chose not to adopt it as its standard product.
- Reduced nicotine to subaddictive levels. The company had the capability to reduce nicotine content to levels that would not cause or sustain addiction - which would have allowed consumers to make a genuine, informed choice about continued use. Instead, the evidence showed that nicotine levels were maintained and manipulated to sustain addiction.
Each of these alternatives was feasible. None would have eliminated the product. All would have materially reduced the harm to the ordinary consumer.
Philip Morris argued that alternative designs - including lower-nicotine cigarettes - were commercially unviable because consumers did not prefer them. The company also argued that even with the alternative designs, cigarettes would still carry risk. Both arguments cut against the plaintiff's feasibility and causation theories.
Verdict for the plaintiff against Philip Morris USA, Inc.