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Home U.S. World Entertainment Sports Business Health Science Technology Politics Offbeat Environment Travel News Articles Supreme Court Asked To Review Tobacco Industry's Criminal Conviction Email Facebook Digg Twitter Buzz Up! ShareThis February 22, 2010 5:24 p.m. EST Topics: addiction, corporate crime, fraud, healthcare policy, social issue, health, crime, law and justice, United States Tom Ramstack - AHN Correspondent Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) - The Justice Department is trying again to force as much as $280 billion in fines on tobacco companies for what it calls "ill-gotten gains." A win for the government is likely to mean bankruptcy for major tobacco companies. Government attorneys filed papers Friday asking the Supreme Court to review a racketeering conviction against the tobacco companies to authorize the fines. The same day, major tobacco companies filed a request for the Supreme Court to overturn the 2006 conviction. The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to hear the case in just over a month. Nine tobacco companies and two trade groups were convicted of trying to deceive the public about the health dangers of smoking through their advertising. They also manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes to ensure smokers would become addicted, according to the Justice Department. The companies "have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs," Judge Gladys Kessler of U.S. District Court in Washington wrote when she convicted the companies after a nine-month trial. She estimated that cigarettes contribute to 400,000 deaths per year. The judge also forbade the companies from marketing their cigarettes as "low tar" or "light." She said they had used their scientific research to make "[e]very aspect of a cigarette ? precisely tailored" to deliver "the optimum amount of nicotine [to] create and sustain smokers' addiction." The Justice Department sought the $280 billion when the trial began under the Clinton administration in 1999. An appeals court ruled in 2004 under the Bush administration that the fine could not exceed $14 billion. If the Supreme Court reopens the case, it revives the possibility of the $280 billion fine, which industry analysts say could bankrupt the tobacco industry. The tobacco companies argued in their Supreme Court filings that they were exercising their First Amendment free speech rights with their ads. The ads questioned the science that showed the link between tobacco and addiction. They also implied that health risks from second-hand smoke and light cigarettes were exaggerated by critics of the tobacco industry. The Supreme Court documents filed by Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard and British American Tobacco said the 2006 racketeering conviction was based on "flimsy" evidence. Racketeering is a form of fraud commonly used against organized crime groups under the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The tobacco companies argued the racketeering prosecution was inappropriate against them because it "distorted RICO beyond recognition." The Philip Morris legal brief said, "Absent further review, the government will henceforth be free to pervert RICO into a device for evading the legislative process, penalizing and chilling public debate on scientific matters, and constraining constitutionally protected speech through vague and sweeping injunctions." The Justice Department argues that the First Amendment would not protect the tobacco companies' ads as free speech because they were being used to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. The government's filing called the case against the tobacco companies "an issue of exceptional importance." Copyright © 2003 - 2010 AHN - All rights reserved.Redistribution, republication. syndication, rewriting or broadcast is prohibited without the prior written consent of AHN.License AHN news for your website, business, digital signage network or publication. 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