Opinion ID: 112777
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pre-1969 Failure-to-Warn Claims

Text: According to the Court, [1] § 5(b) of the 1965 Act is best read as having superseded only positive enactments by legislatures or administrative agencies that mandate particular warning labels. Ante, at 518-519 (emphasis added). In essence, the Court reads § 5(b)'s critical language No statement relating to smoking and health . . . shall be required to mean No particular statement relating to smoking and health shall be required. The Court reasons that because common-law duties do not require cigarette manufacturers to include any particular statement in their advertising, but only some statement warning of health risks, those duties survive the 1965 Act. I see no basis for this element of particularity. To require a warning about cigarette health risks is to require a statement relating to smoking and health. If the presumption against . . . pre-emption, ante, at 518, requires us to import limiting language into the 1965 Act, I do not see why it does not require us to import similarly limiting language into the 1969 Actso that a requirement . . . based on smoking and health . . . with respect to advertising means only a specific requirement, and not just general, noncigarette-specific duties imposed by tort law. The divergent treatment of the 1965 Act cannot be justified by the Act's statement of purposes, which, as the Court notes, expresses concern with diverse, nonuniform, and confusing cigarette labeling and advertising regulations.  15 U. S. C. § 1331(2) (emphasis added). That statement of purposes was left untouched by Congress in 1969, and thus should be as restrictive of the scope of the later § 5(b) as the Court believes it is of the scope of the earlier one. [2] To the extent petitioner's claims are premised specifically on respondents' failure (during the period in which the 1965 Act was in force) to include in their advertising any statement relating to smoking and health, I would find those claims, no less than the similar post-1969 claims, pre-empted. In addition, for reasons I shall later explain, see Part III, infra, I would find pre-emption even of those claims based on respondents' failure to make health-related statements to consumers outside their advertising. However, since § 5(b) of the 1965 Act enjoins only those laws that require statement[s] in cigarette advertising, those of petitioner's claims that, if accepted, would penalize statements voluntarily made by the cigarette companies must be deemed to survive. As these would appear to include petitioner's breach-ofexpress-warranty and intentional fraud and misrepresentation claims, I concur in the Court's judgment in this respect.