A Queens Supreme Court judge has refused to certify a class action by persons who claim they contracted cancer as a result of cigarette smoking, saying that individual considerations “overwhelm” common questions in the case.
In Geiger v. American Tobacco Company, Index No. 10687/97, Justice Nathan L. Berke of Queens County Supreme Court denied a plaintiffs’ motion to proceed as a class, holding that the case fails to satisfy civil procedure rules for class actions. The rules require that the proposed case present a predominance of common questions, and that a class action be a superior way to handle the parties’ legal claims.
