Higher rates of duty raise amount of contraband Treasury gets about 77% of pack price of cigarettes Big tobacco groups are warning Treasury and Customs officials to brace themselves for a tsunami of smuggled cigarettes hitting Britain’s pubs and streets this year as criminal gangs seek to cash in on the UK’s exceptionally high tax rates on tobacco products. Tobacco companies have told ministers that the “tax clouds are gath ... Jump to full article >>

New York’s attorney general on Thursday said he sued six websites for illegally selling cigarettes online to New Yorkers, potentially costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue. Websites that sell cigarettes rarely charge taxes and almost always undercut the prices charged in retail stores. New York state has some of the country’s highest cigarette taxes. The state boosted the levy on cigarettes last year to $4. ... Jump to full article >>

A standing-room-only crowd in the gallery — and more than two dozen jurors and alternates spilling from the jury box — packed a courtroom here Monday to hear opening statements in a trial that pits regional and local medical providers against Big Tobacco. Everything about the case is large: Big dollars: The plaintiffs had sought $1 billion for the cost of treating diseases of smokers, although the demand is down to less than $500 million i ... Jump to full article >>

A woman is suing some of the nation’s largest tobacco companies in Manatee County Circuit Court for monetary damages after she developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after smoking, according to a lawsuit filed this month. Rebecca A. Ireland is suing several tobacco companies, including Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Ireland’s case is one of two pending lawsuits against tobacco companies in Manatee County. In July, t ... Jump to full article >>

Attorneys say Big Tobacco conspired to kill a deal that would have yielded $10 million for flight attendants suing the companies over health problems they attribute to the second-hand smoke they inhaled on the job for years. Soon after lawyers from a tobacco company asked for time to think about a $10 million offer to settle suits filed by thousands of flight attendants, they took the offer off the table. Attorneys for the flight attendants R ... Jump to full article >>

The law firm Searcy Denney put a dramatic end to Tobacco’s eight-case winning streak today by reeling in an $80 million verdict in Webb v. R.J. Reynolds, in Bronson, Florida. Although Tobacco has won eight of the last nine cases, on average during that period they now have lost approximately $8M per trial. I was there trying the case with my partner, David Sales. Here are some of my thoughts from “inside” the trial of a tobacco case. T ... Jump to full article >>

Did Uruguay go too far with the warning labels it makes tobacco companies put on cigarette packages? Philip Morris seems to think so – the big tobacco company filed suit against the South American country. The labels include graphic images – including dead babies and rotten teeth – and they must cover 80 percent of the surface area of each package. If you have the stomach for it, take a look… gallery: [nggallery id=7] sou ... Jump to full article >>

In mid-October, the Government of Alberta announced that they planned to sue Big Tobacco in order to recover the health-care costs associated with tobacco use. It has been a fairly common strategy in the war on tobacco. In the United States, a lawsuit by 46 state Attorneys General was finally settled in 1998, and the four largest tobacco companies are still paying more than $200 billion to the states that participated in the suit. It’s a t ... Jump to full article >>

An alliance of big tobacco groups and corner shop trade bodies is barraging ministers with claims that an upcoming ban on the display of cigarettes on store shelves will trigger an upsurge in illicit sales and organised crime, as well as pushing many legitimate small traders out of business. The desperate lobbying comes ahead of a ban on behind-the-counter displays of tobacco that is slated to come into force for supermarkets in October next yea ... Jump to full article >>

Earlier this month, LB colleague Nathan Koppel wrote a story about tobacco litigation in Florida. While in much of the nation, Koppel wrote, smoking-related litigation has reduced to its embers, in Florida it’s on fire, largely due to a 2006 ruling from the Florida Supreme Court. In that case, the Florida Supreme Court decided that the factual findings made by the jury in a case involving a plaintiff named Howard Engle would be binding in futu ... Jump to full article >>