Talk of settling the tobacco case
on Jun 20, 2005 at 4:29 pm
The federal judge presiding over the Justice Department’s massive anti-racketeering case against the tobacco industry — a lawsuit that might reach the Supreme Court in coming weeks if it stays alive — on Monday urged the opposing sides to consider settling the case.
In a brief order, following what she called “a routine, informal discussion with the parties,” U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler of Washington, D.C., revealed that she had again urged both sides “to consider the advantages of settling this case rather than the risks of litigating it.” The session, held behind closed doors, had not been previously announced; the judge indicated she had scheduled it in a sealed order issued last Friday.
“No legal decisions were made and no legal argument was presented,” the judge said of the Monday session. However, she did not say whether any progress had been made on her suggestion that a settlement deal be reached. Various criticis of the industry in Congress had been pressing the Justice Department in recent days not to settle the case. That pressure is being applied in the wake of a series of revelations in newspapers that the Department’s higher echelon of officials have scaled back sharply the remedies they want the judge to impose for an alleged 40-year conspiracy to deceive the public about the health risks of smoking tobacco.
An agency within the Justice Department, the Office of Professional Responsibility, is investigating whether any legal or ethical violations had occurred in the switching of signals in the Department’s handling of the case.
Judge Kessler made her disclosures about the Monday discussion in an order denying a request from the Washington Post to allow a reporter to attend that session. The Post had also sought access to all documents filed in connection with the Monday meeting.
Both the Justice Departmend and its industry adversaries filed documents under seal in the case last week. Kessler made no mention of those filings in her brief new order, and the contents of the documents remain unknown.
