The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled on a four-year-old case involving a firm that advertised "tax-free" cigarettes for sale to Iowans. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller filed a consumer fraud suit against the Smokers Warehouse Club, which offered to sell Iowans "tax-free" cigarettes through the mail.
The suit was tossed out because the company was based in Mississippi, not in Illinois, as the attorney general had outlined in court documents. So, the attorney general demanded paperwork from the company to try to find out how many cigarettes it had sold to Iowans and what the company’s policies were about paying taxes and ensuring minors weren’t buying cigarettes through the mail.
There’s been a legal battle going on ever since. The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled the state’s attorney general has the authority to demand that information from the company. A lower court had already barred the company from doing business in Iowa.