This case involves whether a smoker who has exhibited no signs of illness may nonetheless sue a tobacco company to pay for annual medical checkups to monitor her health.
The NAM filed an amicus brief arguing that there is no basis in New York law for this cause of action, and the courts are ill-equipped to grapple with the complex social, medical and scientific issues presented by such claims. We urged the court to reject such claims where the plaintiff has no injury. The U.S. Supreme Court and the high courts of most states have already rejected “no injury” claims for medical monitoring. We argued that if such claims are to be allowed, it is up to the legislature, not the courts, to balance the complex business, legal and medical policy decisions and clearly define the standards to be used in court. There is often no consensus even within the medical community on whether to recommend certain screening tests, how often to test (if at all), and who should be tested (if anyone). Allowing medical monitoring without injury also effectively eliminates the statute of limitations on these claims.
On December 17, 2013, by a vote of 4-2, the court declined to create an independent cause of action for medical monitoring. To do so, "absent any evidence of present physical injury or damage to property, would constitute a significant deviation from our tort jurisprudence." It found that a threat of future harm is insufficent to impose tort liability, both to distinguish actual injured parties from others and to avoid crowded courts from frivolous and unfounded claims. Allowing such claims would also divert money away from those who have actually sustained an injury from the exposure. The court also recognized that courts lack the technical expertise to administer a monitoring program, and that the legislature is better suited to make such policy decisions.The ruling also still alllows plaintiffs to recover monitoring costs once they have actually sustained an injnury.
Had the New York court allowed such medical monitoring claims, the precedent would have affected numerous other companies and industries, creating a wide scope of potentially limitless and unpredictable liability. Companies that manufacture, use, store, sell or transport substances that could have a potential health effect were all at risk. In fact, medical monitoring precedents are being used to try to expand liability for other types of claims, including “credit monitoring” for the unauthorized disclosure of financial information, a “product recall” cause of action for latent product defects, and environmental monitoring of groundwater based on a possible risk of future contamination and treatment costs.