The New York Court of Appeals rejected a potentially ground breaking suit filed on behalf of smokers who asked Altria Group to pay for early detection tests for lung cancer, the cigarette maker said.

The suit asked the court to make Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, to pay for computed tomography (CT) testing for long term smokers and former smokers, Altria said in a statement.
In its opinion, the appeals court upheld a 2011 dismissal of the claim by a federal district court. “Allowance of such a claim, absent any evidence of present physical injury or damage to property, would constitute a significant deviation from our tort jurisprudence”, the court said.