NC court ends tobacco company payments in Md., Pa.

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's highest court says three cigarette companies no longer have to make payments to tobacco farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania through a decade-old settlement.

The state Supreme Court ruled Friday that Philip Morris, Lorillard and R.J. Reynolds tobacco companies could stop making payments to those growers through a 1999 agreement. The agreement says the companies could reduce their payments when Congress agreed to a buyout for quota owners in 2004.

The justices ruled the states entered the agreement knowing the payments would end as a result of a quota buyout.

Maryland's Department of Agriculture says farmers in that state and in Pennsylvania would have received $22 million had a trial court ruling been upheld.