## Facts

- Rose D. Cipollone allegedly smoked cigarettes manufactured by the defendants for roughly forty years and died of lung cancer.
- Her husband, Antonio Cipollone, sued individually and on behalf of her estate, asserting products-liability claims, including strict liability based on alleged design defects.
- During pretrial proceedings, the plaintiff moved in limine to exclude evidence offered to show the “utility” side of New Jersey’s risk–utility test.
- Defendants asserted that cigarettes had social utility and sought to introduce evidence not only of user enjoyment, but also of broader economic benefits from the cigarette industry, including job creation and tax revenues.
- The plaintiff argued that New Jersey’s risk–utility inquiry is limited to the product’s utility to users and product-related considerations, not collateral economic effects.

## Issues

1. Under New Jersey strict-liability risk–utility analysis, may a defendant introduce evidence of collateral economic benefits (such as jobs and tax revenues) to establish the utility of the product?

## Decision

- The court granted the plaintiff’s motion in limine.
- The court excluded evidence of collateral economic and similar generalized social benefits arising from the cigarette industry.
- The court held that such collateral-benefit evidence is an improper consideration within New Jersey’s risk–utility framework for strict liability.

## Legal Principles

- New Jersey’s strict-liability risk–utility analysis focuses on the utility of the product itself in relation to the risks it poses to users, not on generalized benefits to the economy or community.
- Evidence must assist the product-specific inquiry (including considerations such as the product’s usefulness to consumers, the magnitude and likelihood of harm, and safety-related design considerations), rather than shift the case toward broad economic-policy judgments.
- Collateral economic benefits risk misleading the factfinder by converting a product-defect determination into a general referendum on an industry’s net social value.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that, in a New Jersey strict-liability design-defect case applying risk–utility analysis, defendants may not rely on evidence of collateral economic benefits such as employment and tax revenues to prove product utility, and such evidence is inadmissible.


Cipollone v. Liggett Grp., Inc., 644 F. Supp. 283 (D.N.J. 1986)