The high court in Massachusetts upheld a $37 million judgment against cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, ruling the company knew its so-called light smokes were no safer than regular ones, despite company advertising to the contrary.

“Philip Morris represented that such products, including Marlboro Lights, delivered lower tar and nicotine and were a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes,” the court wrote in its unanimous decision.

The plaintiff in the suit, Patricia Greene, was a woman who had been a pack-a-day smoker since 1971 who was able to quit smoking for a nine-month period toward the end of the decade and then relapsed and started smoking again. She switched from Marlboro Reds, her go-to brand since she started, to Marlboro Lights, trusting the advertisements she saw that promised less tar and less nicotine, or as she said, “less of the bad stuff.”

In 2013, Greene was diagnosed with lung cancer. She got a lobectomy and began chemo but had to stop when that treatment led to kidney damage. And the cancer spread, hitting her brain in 2018.

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Phillip Morris’ appeal of the conspiracy finding  on two grounds, that there was insufficient evidence and, second, that the trial judge’s instructions to the jury that included “substantial contributing factor” language was erroneous based on a previous SJC ruling.

But SJC Justice Scott L. Kafker says that there was clearly sufficient evidence of the conspiracy. Kafker ruled further that that the court had previously only objected to the language of jury instructions in a different claim against the company and was not relevant for this appeal.

The conspiracy, as Kafker summarizes in this week’s decision, began in 1953 as cigarette executives, including those at Philip Morris, met in New York City to develop “a coordinated response to published studies substantiating a link between smoking and lung cancer.” This despite their own internal admittance “that their own advertising and competitive practices have been a principal factor in creating a health problem.”

“A primary strategy of the coordinated campaign was ‘to overwhelm’ the voices of those who challenged cigarettes as unhealthy ‘with mass publication of opposed viewpoints,’” Kafker wrote.

Greene first sued Philip Morris in Middlesex Superior Court in 2015. The company was found liable for civil conspiracy and Greene was awarded the judgment in 2021.

— Herald wire services contributed