TOBACCO TROUBLESTOBACCO TROUBLESWhere there's smoke
When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. , as the cigarette companies were unpleasantly reminded this week. On Dec. 15 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that smokers may use state consumer protection laws consumer protection laws n. almost all states and the federal government have enacted laws and set up agencies to protect the consumer (the retail purchasers of goods and services) from inferior, adulterated, hazardous and deceptively advertised products, and to sue cigarette purveyors for the way they promote "light" and "low-tar" brands. Altria, maker of Marlboro, and Reynolds American, which makes Camel, had argued that the federal law mandating warning labels trumped state regulation. A day later the companies did prevail in a product liability case brought in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of on the issue of whether they were wrong to sell regular cigarettes when they could have used lower levels of tar and nicotine. The stocks of both companies, which have been sliding most of the year, sank further. 
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