In new round of long legal fight, tobacco firms back in court over claims on smoking's effects

America's biggest tobacco companies say they're ready and willing to pass along factual public health information about cigarettes.

But they say they won't go along with being forced to underwrite an ad campaign that would have the companies brand themselves as liars.

In 2006, a federal judge in Washington ordered the cigarette makers to admit publicly that they had lied for decades about the dangers of smoking.

The companies are heading to an appeals court on Monday to argue that those ads should be set aside and new ones put in their place.

The preamble to the ads says a federal court ruled that the companies "deliberately deceived the American public."

The companies say the statement is overbroad and misleading.