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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina's highest court ruled Friday that three cigarette companies no longer have to make payments to tobacco farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania under a decade-old settlement.
The state Supreme Court determined that Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. may stop making payments to those growers under the 1999 agreement, which stemmed from the $206 billion national tobacco settlement with the states a year earlier.
The so-called "Phase II" agreement with tobacco-growing states required tobacco companies to give $5.15 billion through 2010 to growers and quota owners expected to be hurt through reduced leaf demand brought on by the 1998 settlement.
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