## Facts

- The New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund and other employee health-and-welfare trust funds (the Funds) paid medical benefits for participants who suffered smoking-related illnesses.
- The Funds sued Philip Morris and other tobacco companies, alleging fraudulent misrepresentation by omission and related deceptive conduct about the health consequences of smoking and the risks of nicotine addiction.
- The Funds alleged the defendants’ concealment and misstatements induced people to begin smoking and to continue smoking, increasing smoking-related disease among Fund participants and increasing the Funds’ medical expenditures.
- The Funds further alleged the fraud was aimed not only at smokers generally, but also at the Funds, with the objective of shifting smoking-related healthcare costs to third-party payors.
- The Funds alleged they relied on defendants’ misrepresentations and omissions by failing to treat smoking-related conditions earlier and by not implementing earlier programs to encourage participants to stop smoking.
- Defendants moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing the Funds’ claimed losses were too remote from any alleged misrepresentations because the immediate reliance and injury occurred, if at all, at the smoker level.

## Issues

1. Whether the Funds’ increased healthcare expenditures were too remote from the alleged fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions to satisfy the required causal connection for a New Jersey fraudulent misrepresentation claim at the pleading stage.
2. Whether the Funds sufficiently pleaded the elements of fraudulent misrepresentation—including intent to induce reliance, actual and justifiable reliance by the Funds, and resulting damages—to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.

## Decision

- The court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss.
- Accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, the court concluded the Funds alleged a sufficiently close relationship between the claimed economic injury (increased benefit payments and related costs) and the alleged falsification/omission to proceed past the pleading stage.
- The court held the Funds’ allegations of fraud directed at the Funds, Fund-level reliance (including decisions about treatment timing and cessation efforts), and resulting economic loss were adequate to state a claim for fraudulent misrepresentation.

## Legal Principles

- A fraudulent misrepresentation plaintiff must allege a material misrepresentation (including, in appropriate circumstances, an actionable omission), knowledge of falsity, intent that the plaintiff rely, actual and justifiable reliance by the plaintiff, and resulting damages.
- In fraud, the plaintiff’s injury must be closely related to the alleged falsification; courts may deny recovery where the claimed loss is too remote.
- At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court assumes the truth of well-pleaded allegations and asks whether the complaint plausibly states a claim for relief.
- A third-party payor can plead a direct economic injury theory when it alleges the defendant aimed deceptive conduct at the payor and the payor’s own reliance and decisionmaking contributed to the claimed loss, rather than relying solely on injuries suffered by the more immediate victims.

## Conclusion

The district court refused to dismiss the Funds’ fraud suit at the pleading stage, holding that the Funds plausibly alleged tobacco companies concealed and misstated smoking risks with the intent to induce reliance by the Funds as well as smokers, and that the Funds’ claimed economic losses were not so remote from the alleged deception as to bar the action.


New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund v. Philip Morris, Inc., 17 F. Supp. 2d 324 (1998)