A panel of federal appeals-court judges in Manhattan handed the tobacco industry a victory on Friday by striking down a sweeping proposal by a judge in Brooklyn to organize a single high-stakes trial that might have subjected the industry to billions of dollars in damages.
Three judges of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously against the proposal of Judge Jack Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, saying his plan was flawed for technical reasons.
The proposal was returned to Weinstein's court.
Whether the high-stakes trial would ever reach a courtroom turned on technical legal issues such as who had the right to sue and enter what is known as a class action, and whether the proceeding was fundamentally fair by placing a limit on potential damages.
In September 2002, Weinstein proposed presiding over a national trial that would not assess individual claims for compensation, but would decide only whether the cigarette companies should be assessed punitive damages because of the harm done to smokers and their survivors.
A single industry fund to pay potential punitive damages would be established. The class for the trial, with some exceptions, would be all current and former smokers of the defendant companies' cigarettes since April 1993.
In their 37-page ruling released on Friday, the three appeals court judges found flaws in Weinstein's proposal, especially in the membership of the class and the size of potential damages.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
RSS