Federal Officer Removal & Tobacco

Tony Sebok has a Writ piece up about Philip Morris’s argument in the Watson case (oral argument transcript [PDF]) that “lights” cases should be removable because they were acting as federal officers in doing the testing and such.  Sebok is, to say the least, skeptical:

…I predict that the Eighth Circuit’s decision will be reversed by a large majority–if not a unanimous vote–of the Court. There are lots of things wrong with the plaintiffs’ “lights” cases, but they won’t be solved by preserving the ridiculous fiction that the cigarettes companies were somehow acting on the government’s behalf when they took their product to market.