AUSTIN (AP) -- Private lawyers hired to represent Texas in the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry Friday agreed to accept $3.3 billion for their work instead of seeking more money from the state.
The five were awarded the $3.3 billion by a national arbitration panel as compensation for their work on the settlement that gave Texas $17.3 billion from tobacco companies. The money is being paid over 25 years.The private lawyers were under a federal judge's order to decide by Friday whether to accept that amount or try to collect under their original state contract, which called for them to get 15 percent of whatever Texas receives from the tobacco industry.
A 1998 report by professors at Yale University and the University of California-Berkeley said tobacco industry payments to Texas should be adjusted annually for inflation and other factors. That would help boost the value of Texas' settlement as high as $105 billion, which could have allowed the lawyers to collect an additional $12.5 billion, said Texas Attorney General John Cornyn.
A lawyer for the five private attorneys said he couldn't confirm Cornyn's estimate, but he added that the attorneys' decision Friday will save Texas taxpayers billions of dollars.
Their decision amounts to a waiver of the contract with the state, which was negotiated by former Attorney General Dan Morales, a Democrat who didn't seek re-election last year.
The $3.3 billion that was awarded by the arbitration panel is to be paid by the tobacco companies. The private attorneys already have received about $364 million from the settlement, which reimbursed the state for the cost of treating tobacco-related illness.
Cornyn had vowed to fight if the private lawyers tried to collect any of the state's settlement.
The lawyers filed their decision with U.S. District Judge David Folsom in Texarkana, who must approve the private attorneys' decision.
The attorneys are John Eddie Williams and John O'Quinn of Houston, Walter Umphrey and Wayne Reaud of Beaumont, and Harold Nix of Daingerfield.