In re Simon II Litigation’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 3 district · 4 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Plaintiffs allege, and can provide supporting evidence, that, beginning with a clandestine meeting in December 1953 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City among the presidents of Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard and U.S. Tobacco, tobacco companies embarked on a systematic, half-century long scheme to ... :(a) stop competing with each other in making or developing less harmful cigarettes; (b) continue knowingly and willfully to engage in misrepresentations and deceptive acts by, among other things, denying knowledge that cigarettes caused disease and death and agreeing not to disseminate harmful information showing the destructive effects of nicotine and tobacco consumption; (c) shut down research efforts and suppress medical information that appeared to be adverse to the Tobacco Companies’ position that tobacco was not harmful; (d) not compete with respect to making any claims relating to the relative health-superiority of specific tobacco products; and (e) to confuse the public about, and otherwise distort, whatever accurate information about the harmful effects of their products became known despite their “[efforts to conceal such information.]””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Simon II Litigation v. Philip Morris Usa Inc.

2. “(b) Class Actions Maintainable. An action may be maintained as a class action if the prerequisites of subdivision (a) are satisfied, and in addition: (1) the prosecution of separate actions by or against individual members of the class would create a risk of (A) inconsistent or varying adjudications with respect to individual members of the class which would establish incompatible standards of conduct for the party opposing the class, or (B) adjudications with respect to individual members of the class which would as a practical matter be disposi-tive of the interests of the other members not parties to the adjudications or substantially impair or impede their ability to protect their interests[.]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Simon II Litigation v. Philip Morris Usa Inc.

3. “This class action is intended to cover all punitive damages nationwide. This could include punitive damages due to outrageous conduct by defendants towards non-class members. The punitive function served by this certified class could be utilized in part for persons outside the class as, for example, passive breathers of the smoke exuded by others, those with diseases other than those represented by this certified class, and future diseased persons.... Allowing the jury to consider evidence of damage to others at this stage in setting the punitive award is appropriate in a nationwide class action where a portion of the harmful behavior may not be corre-latable with class members.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Simon II Litigation v. Philip Morris Usa Inc.