Tobacco Settlement Too Greedy and Venal for Even the ABA

Yesterday, I said that trial lawyers received $14 billion (not million, billion) under the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), in discussing how that lucrative settlement has triggered copycat lawsuits by other countries against the tobacco industry.

Apparently, I was off by a billion dollars.  The trial lawyers received $15 billion, not $14 billion, under the MSA, according to the American Bar Association Journal.

The American Bar Association (ABA) has seemingly never seen a tort reform proposal it liked, and almost invariably takes positions that enrich lawyers as a class.

So it’s striking that not even the ABA Journal can bring itself to defend the MSA.  It recently ran an article called “How greed, hubris and high-stakes lobbying laid waste to the $246 billion tobacco settlement.”