US: N.C. Receives $211 Million in Cigarette Lawsuit Payments

Source from:  Greensboro (NC) News & Record 04/28/2013

North Carolina's annual share of payments from top cigarette companies paying for smoking-related health care costs is $211 million.

Attorney General Roy Cooper notified Gov. Pat McCrory and legislative leaders on Friday how much money was going to state coffers and the Golden LEAF Foundation, which politicians established to help tobacco-growing regions transition their economies.

Cooper's office and 19 other states recently reached an agreement with the major tobacco companies that avoided costly litigation that he said could have lasted for years and provided a framework to ensure continued annual payments to the state. The agreement resolved a 10-year dispute over payments owed by the companies under the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.

In 1998, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard agreed to pay the states an average of $6.5 billion a year to settle lawsuits over health care costs related to smoking. Several other tobacco companies later joined the MSA. For the past 10 years, the tobacco companies and the states had a dispute over portions of the payments. About $23 million or more of each annual payment would have been put at risk had the dispute not been resolved, according to Cooper's office.

North Carolina has received more than $1 billion in the past 10 years under the agreement 20 states negotiated with the major tobacco companies 15 years ago.

Winston-Salem-based R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. paid $1.8 billion this year for the second-largest cigarette company's share to all the states covered by the settlement.

Greensboro-based Lorillard Inc. paid $900 million this year to the covered states. In its recent report of first-quarter results, the company said that payment was cut by $164 million under terms of the recent settlement. Enditem