Hollywood Studios defend freedom to feature smoking in movies from lawsuit blaming film industry over children's addiction to tobacco

On Friday, notable names in the Hollywood industry including studios, trade associations and theater owners defended their rights not to be fined for misguided morality play. They have filed court papers asking a judge to reject the case that blames them for making children addicted to tobacco.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a lawsuit was filed seeking to remove scenes from a movie that contains tobacco imagery. The lawsuit filed in February against Motion Picture Association of America, National Association of Theater Owners, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. alleged the defendants of misrepresentation, negligence and breach of duty. Timothy Forsyth and other plaintiffs cited that if the judge won't order up the injunction, additional 3.2 million children will be exposed to smoking while another million will have early deaths.

Yahoo reported that the litigation also cites the former ratings systems in 1960s when Hollywood established a morality code to self-regulation. MPAA revealed that nearly all parents approved of having ratings but the plaintiffs attack the advertising of smoking in movies. They cited movies like "Dumb and Dumber To", "Transformers: Age of Extinction" and "Iron Man 3"  among films that feature tobacco-imagery to children.

However, Movie Primes reported that the Hollywood defendants will try to strike down the motion as an impingement of their First Amendment rights. Their court papers said the lawsuit "is a misguided attempt to upend basic tort principles and core First Amendment protections to force the Classification and Rating Administration ('CARA') - the movie ratings body that the MPAA and NATO jointly operate - to change the opinions it expresses through its movie ratings system."

The defendants said if the plaintiffs' cause will proceed, there would be no finish to claims "invoking CARA's supposed avocation to negligence a possess opinions and instead to exercise a given advocacy group's elite amicable process in assigning ratings."  Also, they argued that the defendants might give an R rating to every film that depict alcohol use, gambling, contact sports, bullying, consumption of soda or fatty foods or even high speed driving.

Tags

Hollywood, Studios, smoking, freedom, Sony, Disney, paramount, Motion Picture Association of America, Timothy Forsyth, Tobacco Imagery

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