Philip Morris may have to pay for smokers' CT scans

Oct 19, 2009

Cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA could be on the hook to pay for CT chest scans of longtime smokers, following a unanimous decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court released on Monday.

The ruling by Massachusetts' highest court means that a lawsuit filed by three long-term smokers can proceed to U.S. District Court. If a jury decides in favor of the plaintiffs, the Richmond, VA-based firm could be required to pay for low-dose CT scans to look for early-stage lung cancer, according to a Monday article by the Associated Press.

The plaintiffs aren't seeking monetary exemplary damages, but they filed a motion for class certification that would expand Philip Morris' screening responsibility to include all Massachusetts residents 50 years or older with a smoking history of 20 pack-years or more who have smoked Marlboro cigarettes, according to a text of the ruling obtained by AuntMinnie.com.

The plaintiffs argued that the cigarettes are defectively designed, and Philip Morris had available to it "commercially acceptable and feasible alternative designs that would have drastically reduced the cancer-causing content" but decided to conceal the product defect, according to the court filing.

Rather than the presence of "manifest smoking-related disease," the plaintiffs allege a "high and significantly increased risk of developing lung cancer" as a result of smoking. The technology to assess this increased risk was not available in the past, they argued, but in recent years low-dose CT screening has been shown to reveal early-stage lung cancer, according to the court filing.

"Philip Morris contends that our jurisprudence requires proof of physical harm manifested by objective symptomology as a necessary part of damages. We disagree," Justice Francis Spina wrote for the court in the unanimous ruling, noting that a pedestrian hit by a car has a right to reimbursement for diagnostic tests regardless of the presence of manifest injury.

"It's a big step for the plaintiffs ... for the court to recognize that there are types of harm that aren't always apparent to the naked eye," Edward Foye, one of the smokers' attorneys, told the Associated Press.

NY smokers sue Philip Morris for cancer screenings, January 20, 2006