Philip Morris USA v. Williams (U.S. Supreme Court)

The Supreme Court granted our petition for certiorari and held that under the U.S. Constitution, state courts may not permit juries in individual cases to punish defendants for harms suffered by non-parties even where those harms arose from conduct similar to the conduct that injured the plaintiff. On remand from that decision, the Oregon Supreme Court refused to grant Philip Morris any relief, reasoning that there were two unrelated defects in Philip Morris’s proposed jury instruction that made the error identified by the Supreme Court harmless. The Supreme Court initially granted our second petition for certiorari to address whether the Oregon Supreme Court violated the mandate and/or whether that court’s post hoc rationale for refusing to afford Philip Morris any relief is an “independent and adequate” state-law ground, but dismissed the petition as improvidently granted.

Briefs

Petition for certioari

Reply Brief

Brief for the Petitioner

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Petition for certioari

Reply Brief

Brief for the Petitioners

Reply Brief