An appeals court in Brazil has reversed a lower court's order that Philip Morris and Souza Cruz compensate smokers who said they were harmed by cigarettes.

In a unanimous decision yesterday, Sao Paulo’s 7th Civil Chamber of the Court of Appeals  vacated , the judgment of the court of 1st instance that had found in favour of the indemnification claim brought by the Association for the Defense of the Health of Smokers ("ADESF") against the Brazilian cigarette manufacturers Souza Cruz, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, and Philip Morris Brasil,a subsidiary of Philip Morris International. ADESF sought indemnification for "all the consumers of defendant's products" for moral and material damages attributed to tobacco, in addition to having the manufacturers include in their  packaging the warning already imposed by the ministry of health in 1999.
The court granted the manufacturer appeals  on the grounds that the lower civil court decision had violated the constitutional principle of due process of law since it had failed to extend to the manufacturers the opportunity of producing any evidence, including expert evidence which had  been ordered by the appeals court itself.
The courts’ primary reasoning for rejecting this type of claim is that consumers have free will to decide  whether to smoke, since the decision to consume the product  is a question of free choice, the widespread public knowledge of the diseases associated with cigarette consumption and the absence of defect in the product. With yesterday's decision by the court, the case now returns to the original trial court for production of evidence and new judgment. (pi)