Tuesday, March 11, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The suit, filed Monday in District Court, seeks class action status. It claims cigarette manufacturers controlled and manipulated the amount of nicotine in their tobacco products to create and sustain addictions.
A judge must decide if the suit can go forward as a class-action, meaning it would be brought on behalf of all people who ever smoked and became addicted in Nevada, said attorney Robert Gerard.
In 1996 a federal judge struck down an attempt to create a national class-action lawsuit against tobacco manufacturers for similar charges. Gerard said that ruling was made because of the sheer numbers of potential class members if drawn from the entire country.
But he said a smaller, state class-action suit would not be affected by the federal ruling.
Gerard called the local suit an attempt "to protect the residents and citizens of the state of Nevada."
"We have said for years that the tobacco industry knew nicotine was addictive. Yet even today they deny that fact," he said.
A lawyer for cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, one of several companies named in the suit, said state class-action litigation on smoking is as unwieldy as a national suit.
"It's impossible to try hundreds of thousands of cases at the same time when you are talking about smoking," said attorney Michael York.
"You have to have a factual determination in the case of each individual smoker since every one is different."
He said the filing of state lawsuits, in the wake of the federal ruling, is "a pretty cynical attempt by plaintiff's lawyers to avoid the usual rigors of a smoking case by attempting to keep the individuals out of the fray and focusing instead on the companies."
The Las Vegas suit said "two-thirds of adults who smoke say they wish they could quit." The approximately 30-page complaint also quotes information uncovered or offered at congressional hearings on nicotine addiction.
The hearings, the suit said, found numerous instances in which tobacco company officials made note of nicotine's addictive nature while denying the fact to the general public.
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