LOS ANGELES - Last Thursday the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that smokers may sue the tobacco industry once they develop a disease like lung cancer, even if they suffered different smoking-related ailments years earlier, the Los Angeles Times reports.

According to the newspaper: "The decision is likely to keep lawsuits alive that might otherwise have been thrown out because of expired legal deadlines and allow new suits to be filed, lawyers who filed the suit said."

In the case before the state??s high court, Nikki Pooshs, a former smoker, was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1989 and a couple of years later with periodontal disease, both attributable to smoking. But she did not sue the tobacco industry until she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003, writes the newspaper.

However, as cigarette makers argued, her suit should have been dismissed. State law gives people two years to sue after an injury is discovered.

But the high court disagreed. A ruling written by Justice Joyce L. Kennard found that an early disease may not trigger the legal deadline for filing suit "if the injury was 'separate and distinct?? from the later ailment," writes the newspaper

"We hold that two physical injuries ?" both caused by the same tobacco use over the same period of time ?" can, in some circumstances, be considered 'qualitatively different' for determining when the clock begins ticking on legal deadlines," Kennard wrote.

In a prepared statement, Philip Morris U.S.A. wrote: "Although we are disappointed with the decision, the California Supreme Court made it clear that it was not addressing the merits of this case or any case," the statement said. "Rather, the decision addresses a narrow technical point of law relating to the statute of limitations."

Gil Purcell, who represents Pooshs, commented: "Now tobacco must defend its products in California on the merits instead of tortured statute of limitations arguments...We look forward to California juries getting to hear the sordid story that is big tobacco."