Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007), 556 U.S. 178 (2009), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which held that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits punitive damages, and ordered a lower court to reconsider its damages awards on that basis.

Mayola Williams, the widow of Jesse D. Williams, who died of smoking-related lung cancer in 1997, sued Philip Morris USA, a cigarette manufacturer,[1] for fraud based on Philip Morris advertisements and sponsored studies that made cigarettes seem less dangerous than they actually were.

While determining the reprehensibility of Philip Morris's actions, the court considered the length of the misinformation campaign and the number of people it had reached, concluding that its actions were so reprehensible that they justified punitive damages 97 times greater than the actual damages.

[5] After Philip Morris paid Williams, it then fought the state over paying the remaining amount in punitive damages to the state, claiming that the tobacco settlement signed by Oregon in 1998 prevented Oregon from collecting.

[5] The Oregon Supreme Court again disagreed with Philip Morris in December 2011 and ruled that they had to pay the remaining punitive damages, which after interest then totaled $99 million.