The Heartland Institute

In early November, a Louisiana federal district court judge ruled the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Multistate Settlement Agreement (MSA) on tobacco may proceed to trial. The MSA was brokered in 1998 between 46 states and the four major tobacco companies, the resolution ...

On March 20, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it would not review a California court's decision to award $50 million in punitive damages to the estate of a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker who developed cancer. Richard Boeken of Topanga, California, who started smoking at age 13, sued Philip Morris USA five years ago, claiming ...

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has launched a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the multi-state tobacco settlement of 1998. The suit, filed August 2, alleges the agreement between 46 states and major tobacco companies is unconstitutional because it violates the Compact Clause of the Constitution: "No State ...

This case challenges the Master Settlement Agreement of 1998 (MSA), through which the four major tobacco companies (the Majors) and the States became business partners in establishing one of the most effective and destructive cartels in the history of the Nation. During the 1990s, state Attorneys General filed dozens of suits ...

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Once again, a federal court has slipped on the banana peel of "state cooperation." The otherwise sensible Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has sustained the 1998 Maser Settlement Agreement on tobacco litigation against an attack under the Constitution's compact clause. That little-known provision requires that "any agreement or ...

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Although there is no definitive proof that smoking cigarettes is hazardous to your health, everyone knows it is. For decades, that has been the tobacco industry’s official position. Until recently, such incoherence was a target of ridicule rather than outrage. In 1994, Christopher Buckley published a successful satirical novel ...

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When Attorney General Janet Reno testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 1997, Ted Kennedy noted that four of his colleagues had written a letter urging her to imitate the states that were suing the tobacco companies. The Massachusetts Democrat asked her about the possibility of recovering money spent on smoking ...

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