280 billion disgorgement gone!

Forbes.com ^ | 02.28.05 | Scott Woolley

[SheLion]

Good news, first 280 billion disgorgement gone! Now maybe the damn MSA!

[SheLion]

[Madame Dufarge]

A second zinger came after a deputy attorney general for New York declared that to believe the states had sold out to Big Tobacco, you would have to assume that 46 attorneys general are liars.

"That's tempting," Judge Guido Calabresi shot back. "It may be that when the states were offered a stake in a monopoly, they took it."

[SheLion]

"It may be that when the states were offered a stake in a monopoly, they took it."

And boy! Did they take it!

[Mears]

Unbelievable.

Jeffrey Vrezian is my new hero. The Armenians always were a canny bunch,I know quite a few of them.

The entire thing reeks of corruption,doesn't it,and the general public just doesn't care?

[Madame Dufarge]

and the general public just doesn't care?

No, we're the new lepers.

[SheLion]

The entire thing reeks of corruption,doesn't it,and the general public just doesn't care?

The general public that do not smoke are untouched by all of this. :(

[TexasCowboy]

I'm finding more reason to laugh these days.

There seems to be a flicker of a light in the darkness of anti-smoking stupidity.

[Montfort]

"A key feature of the Big Tobacco-and-state-government cartel: rules that levy tort-settlement costs on upstart cigarette companies, companies that were not even in existence when the tort was being committed."

It is hard to understand what the legal basis would be for making companies that are guilty of nothing pay States under some dettlement agreement to which the upstarts were not a party.

It makes it pretty clear that the whole suit and settlement were nothing more than a way to tax.

[VermiciousKnid]

Good news and more good news.

I like this upstart. He's got guts.

Regards,

[Enterprise]

"the states agreed to help the big brands avoid getting undersold by discounters."

WOW!

[ccmay]

There's an old Middle Eastern proverb that says something like: it takes two Arabs to cheat a Greek, two Greeks to cheat a Jew, and two Jews to cheat an Armenian.

-ccm

[Publius6961]

Spitzer's deputy counsel Avi Schick says the settlement is directly responsible for... so flawed "as to be worthless." Regardless, Schick says, the higher prices and lower sales "directly translates into tens of thousands of longer, better and healthier lives."

Are Deputy attorneys general allowed to make unfounded asserions willy nilly now and with a straight face present them as facts? Without a micrometer of supporting facts?
This is mind boggling.
Assuming "his tens of thousands of longer, better and healthier" lives to be verifiable and documented, where is the study? And where is the reaults of the negative aspects of smoking cessassion, increased obesity, heart disease and stress related strokes? I would love to pore through the statistics, the length and breadth of that study!

[Still Thinking]

Forget antitrust. How can these legal masterminds justify with a straight face enforcing a legal settlement against entities who didn't commit the wrongs leading to the settlement, in fact did not even exist when the wrongs were committed, and who were not represented at the settlement table.

As far as believing that 46 attorneys general were liars, I would have thought that would not only not have been beyond the pale, but would have in fact been the DEFAULT position. They do work for the government after all.

[SheLion]

There seems to be a flicker of a light in the darkness of anti-smoking stupidity.

I just pray the good news continues.

[dennisw]

This "upstart" must be doing something right if he had Elliot Spitzer going nuts

[Mears]

The main thing I know about Jews and Armenians(and there are lots of both where I live)is that they are smart and successful.

By the way,I'm neither Jewish nor Armenian.LOL

[Gabz]

You don't have to be a judge or a lawyer to see the damned MSA for what it is - just a bit of common sense says it's a money grab by the states...........and now that others have tried to hone in on the money the states and TC's are screaming foul..........the heck with them.

Smokers saw what happened to them with the big companies and so went with the upstarts and now the biggies are acting like 2nd graders.

[Gabz]

"the states agreed to help the big brands avoid getting undersold by discounters."

I've been trying to tell people that for several years - but no one wanted to believe me.

[Enterprise]

I haven't been aware that the states colluded with the tobacco companies. I just more or less figured that this whole thing was a "tax grab" scheme. It appears it is a tax grab scheme as well as an anticompetitive cooperative effort. The whole thing is disgusting.