Here are some of the words never mentioned, not once, during the hour-long oral argument Wednesday in the case called Philip Morris v. Williams:

Cigarette
Tobacco
Cancer
Dead

And here is a name mentioned only once during the hour:

Jesse Williams

Rather remarkable, one might think, for a case that began around the following facts. Jesse Williams smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for many years. He contracted lung cancer. He died. His widow sued the tobacco company, and in 1999 won a $79.5 million punitive judgment.

But  Philip Morris v. Williams has long since moved past the gory, human details and into a more arid realm. A realm, that is to say, from which all blood has seemingly been drained. The arguments made by attorneys Stephen M. Shapiro and Robert S. Peck on Wednesday, the third time the Supreme Court has considered the case, focused on a judge's instructions to the trial jury and how the Oregon Supreme Court handled a remand order from the Supreme Court. In terms of the arguments pressed, it wasn't really a tobacco case at all; which may help explain why there were far fewer reporters attending than had originally been expected.

Still, some heat ignited a time or two. Justice Souter was strikingly persistent in his questioning of Shaprio, Philip Morris's attorney. At one point, sounding rather, well, irked, Justice Souter exclaimed that  "I keep asking the question which I think I have now put to your three times and have yet to hear an answer on the merits on."