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Separate NY Arbitration on Adjustments to Historic Tobacco Settlement

By Daniel Wise
March 26, 2008

New York State Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Ramos of Manhattan has set the framework under which New York State's entitlement to approximately $800 million a year from the tobacco industry will be tested.

At issue is the industry's claim that it should receive a downward adjustment in the payments required by the historic $248 billion settlement reached in 1998 with 52 states and territories. The adjustment the industry is seeking for 2004, the year that is the subject of the litigation, has been pegged at $1.1 billion. Though the funds in question stem from 2004 calculations, the issues raised will most likely recur every year, and the 1998 accord requires that the annual payments extend in perpetuity.

In a pair of rulings in January, Ramos said that New York state has a right to seek its own separate arbitration on claims that manufacturers have lost market share. Ramos is the first judge in the nation to rule that a state is entitled to its own, separate arbitration on claims that cigarette manufacturers have lost market share because of the obligations imposed by the 1998 settlement.

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