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Non-Tech : Philip Morris - A Stock For Wealth Or Poverty (MO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: md1derful who wrote (6286)	9/8/2001 11:35:32 AM
From: Daniel Liberty	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6439

Another travesty. I am sure the lawyers need this money to stop the kids from smoking. Dan ----------- Panel awards big pay in suit $450 million goes to tobacco case lawyers September 8, 2001 BY DAWSON BELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER LANSING -- The private attorneys who assisted state government lawyers in the landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies will receive $450 million, an arbitration panel has decided. That works out to an hourly rate of $22,500, based on claims by law firms in South Carolina and Mississippi that they spent 20,000 hours on the Michigan portion of the tobacco case. The three-member Tobacco Fee Arbitration Panel voted 2-1 on the fees, with the dissenting member suggesting that outside attorneys did very little substantive work on the Michigan case, and that the huge award can't even begin to be justified. The fees do not come from the state's share of the tobacco lawsuit settlement, estimated at about $8.5 billion over 25 years, but are to be paid by the tobacco company defendants. Under terms of the 1998 settlement of the states' lawsuits, the panel's decision cannot be appealed. The majority opinion said the large fee reflects the importance of Michigan in the national legal and political strategy to force the tobacco companies to compensate states for smokers' illness. The majority also found that, while the direct involvement in the Michigan lawsuit by the private firms was not significant, their coordination of the lawsuits nationally was critical to the overall settlement. Dissenter Charles Renfrew said the Michigan award was way out of proportion to earlier decisions by the panel on other states' cases. In Illinois, for example, the state won $9.3 billion in the settlement and the panel awarded $121 million to the outside counsel. The Michigan case was the 14th state attorney fee case decided by the panel. Some of the other state plaintiffs settled with their lawyers separately.