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Service Employees International Union Health and Welfare Fund v. Phillip Morris Inc.

Where plaintiff labor-management health trust funds sued tobacco companies for recovery of costs incurred as a result of paying for the health care needs of individual smokers, dismissal of claims affirmed and denial of motion to dismiss plaintiff's RICO and fraud claims reversed because the claims were too remote, contingent, derivative and indirect to survive.

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Argued February 21, 2001

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Rogers.

In these two appeals, the court must determine whether the plaintiffs have demonstrated proximate cause in seeking, on an aggregate basis, to recover costs incurred as a result of paying for the health care needs of individual smokers. The complaints allege conspiracy and fraud in connection with federal antitrust and racketeering (“RICO”) claims as well as antitrust claims under District of Columbia law and common law claims. Similar claims have been considered and rejected as too remote by seven other circuits. Because we agree with the other circuits that the alleged injuries of the third-party payors are too remote to have been proximately caused by the defendants’ alleged conduct, we reverse the denial of the motion to dismiss with respect to the RICO and fraud claims in Service Employees International Union Health and Welfare Fund v. Philip Morris Inc., 83 F. Supp. 2d 70 (D.D.C. 1999) (“Service Employees”), and otherwise affirm the dismissal of the complaints in Republic of Guatemala v. Tobacco Institute, Inc., 83 F. Supp. 2d 125 (D.D.C. 1999) (“Guatemala”).

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