510
Opinion of the Court
warranted that smoking the cigarettes which they manufactured and sold did not present any significant health consequences" (Count 7, App. 88). The "fraudulent misrepresentation claims" allege that respondents had willfully, "through their advertising, attempted to neutralize the [federally mandated] warnin[g]" labels (Count 6, App. 87-88), and that they had possessed, but had "ignored and failed to act upon," medical and scientific data indicating that "cigarettes were hazardous to the health of consumers" (Count 8, App. 89). Finally, the "conspiracy to defraud claims" allege that respondents conspired to deprive the public of such medical and scientific data (ibid.).
As one of their defenses, respondents contended that the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, enacted in 1965, and its successor, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969, protected them from any liability based on their conduct after 1965. In a pretrial ruling, the District Court concluded that the federal statutes were intended to establish a uniform warning that would prevail throughout the country and that would protect cigarette manufacturers from being "subjected to varying requirements from state to state," Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 593 F. Supp. 1146, 1148 (NJ 1984), but that the statutes did not pre-empt common-law actions. Id., at 1153-1170.4 Accordingly, the court granted a motion to strike the pre-emption defense entirely.
4 The court explained: "However, the existence of the present federally mandated warning does not prevent an individual from claiming that the risks of smoking are greater than the warning indicates, and that therefore such warning is inadequate. The court recognizes that it will be extremely difficult for a plaintiff to prove that the present warning is inadequate to inform of the dangers, whatever they may be. However, the difficulty of proof cannot preclude the opportunity to be heard, and affording that opportunity will not undermine the purposes of the Act." 593 F. Supp., at 1148.
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