Cipollone, Rose Defrancesco
(Lung Cancer Victim, Plaintiff in Cipollone v. Liggett))Rose Cipollone, who began smoking in 1942 and who died of lung cancer in 1984. He claims that respondents are responsible for Rose Cipollone's death because they breached express warranties contained in their advertising, because they failed to warn consumers about the hazards of smoking, because they fraudulently misrepresented those hazards to consumers, and because they conspired to deprive the public of medical and scientific information about smoking. The Court of Appeals held that petitioner's state-law claims were preempted by federal statutes, and other courts have agreed with that analysis. As one of their defenses, respondents contended that the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, enacted in 1965, and its successor, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969, protected them from any liability based on their conduct after 1965. In a pretrial ruling, the District Court concluded that the federal statutes were intended to establish a uniform warning that would prevail throughout the country, and that would protect cigarette manufacturers from being "subjected to varying requirements from state to state," but that the statutes did not preempt common-law actions. Accordingly, the court granted a motion to strike the preemption defense entirely....