Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, Ltd. v. Beebe

574 F.3d 929, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 17219, 2009 WL 2366386
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedAugust 4, 2009
Docket08-1436
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 574 F.3d 929 (Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, Ltd. v. Beebe) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, Ltd. v. Beebe, 574 F.3d 929, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 17219, 2009 WL 2366386 (8th Cir. 2009).

Opinions

SMITH, Circuit Judge.

Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, Ltd., and Heber Springs Wholesale Grocery, Inc. (collectively “appellants”) allege that Arkansas Code Annotated § 26-57-261 (“Allocable Share Amendment”) violates the Sherman Act and various sections of the United States Constitution and the Arkansas Constitution. Mike Beebe, in his official capacity as Attorney General for the State of Arkansas (“the State”), moved to dismiss the claims for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court2 [933]*933denied the State’s motion insofar as it sought dismissal of appellants’ claim that retroactive application of the Allocable Share Amendment violated their due process rights.3 All other aspects of the State’s motion were granted, and appellants brought this appeal. For the following reasons, we affirm the district court.

I. Background

In the mid-1990s, 50 states and two territories (“settling states”), including Arkansas, filed suit against the country’s major cigarette manufacturers. The action sought to recover Medicaid costs and other damages incurred by the states related to cigarette smoking and to impose restrictions on the cigarette manufacturers’ sales and advertising practices. These lawsuits were settled by the execution of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) on November 23,1998.

A. Master Settlement Agreement

The MSA was executed by the settling states and the four largest cigarette manufacturers, known as Original Participating Manufacturers (OPMs).4 This landmark settlement agreement banned certain advertising (particularly activities targeted at youth), restricted other activities such as lobbying, and obligated the OPMs to make payments to the settling states for all future cigarette sales in perpetuity. In exchange, the settling states released pending claims and agreed to forego future claims against the OPMs related to any recovery of healthcare costs paid by the states as a result of smoking-induced illnesses.

The MSA provides for annual payments by each OPM for the benefit of the settling states. The amount of each OPM’s payment is based on that OPM’s relative national market share. The settling states apportion the annual MSA payments among themselves according to each state’s preset allocable share. Any OPM losing market share pays less to the settling states while an OPM gaining market share pays more.

Since 1998, more than 40 other tobacco manufacturers have joined the MSA and are known as Subsequent Participating Manufacturers (SPMs). SPMs and OPMs are collectively referred to as Participating Manufacturers (PMs). SPMs must also agree to abide by the MSA’s restrictions in exchange for the settling states’ release of present and future claims. As an incentive to join the MSA, any SPM that joined within 90 days after execution of the MSA is exempt from making annual payments to the settling states unless that SPM increases its market share beyond its 1998 levels or beyond 125 percent of its 1997 market share. An SPM joining after the 90-day period must make payments based on that SPM’s national market share.

Grand River was not a party to the MSA, has not since joined the MSA, and is considered a Non-Participating Manufacturer (NPM). An NPM may become an SPM simply by joining the MSA and complying with its payment provisions. To protect the market share of all PMs, the MSA allows settling states to enact a statute which forces NPMs to place money into escrow each year to settle future judgments. An NPM’s payments into the escrow fund are dependent on the number of cigarettes that the NPM sells in that state in a given year.

[934]*934B. Escrow Statute

The MSA is a wholly contractual agreement that requires PMs to reimburse settling states based on the national market share of their cigarette sales. But because NPMs are not parties to the contract, they are not obligated by the MSA. Therefore, the settling states may not be able to collect future judgments from NPMs for harm caused by their cigarette sales. To address this problem, the MSA allows settling states to enact statutes requiring NPMs to place money in escrow each year based on their relative market share. States may use these escrow funds to recover tobacco-related healthcare costs. Arkansas originally enacted its statute (“Escrow Statute”) in 1999 and amended it in February 2005. See Ark.Code Ann. §§ 26-57-260, 261.

The original Escrow Statute required NPMs to deposit funds into escrow5 that would not be released for 25 years unless a court ordered otherwise. 1999 Ark. Acts 1165. The original statute also included an exception provision to permit early release of funds. Under this provision, an NPM could obtain the release of escrow funds that were “greater than the state’s allocable share of the total payments that such manufacturer would have been required to make in that year under the [MSA].” Id

Although an NPM’s escrow payments to a state were based on cigarette sales in that state, this escrow exemption provision allowed a return of the funds based on the relevant state’s allocable share of the national MSA payments. See id This provision, therefore, assumed that an NPM would sell its cigarettes nationally. Creative NPMs realized that this arrangement allowed them to concentrate their sales in a few states rather than many and thereby immediately recover most of their es-crowed funds because the provision refunded escrow funds to the extent those funds exceeded each state’s “allocable share” of the national MSA payment.

C. Allocable Share Amendment

Early escrow fund releases frustrated the purposes of the Escrow Statute. States quickly discovered the apparent hole in the statute’s fabric and sought to mend it. Consequently, the Arkansas legislature amended the statute in 2005 to address this concern. Act 384 of 2005, known as the Allocable Share Amendment, amended Arkansas Code Annotated § 26-57 — 261(a) (2) (B) (ii) to provide in relevant part as follows:

(B) A tobacco product manufacturer that places funds into escrow pursuant to subdivision (a)(2)(A) of this section shall receive the interest or other appreciation on such funds as earned. Such funds themselves shall be released from escrow only under the following circumstances:
(ii) To the extent that a tobacco product manufacturer establishes that the amount it was required to place into escrow on account of units sold in the state in a particular year was greater than the Master Settlement Agreement payments, as determined under section IX(i) of the Master Settlement Agreement including after final determination of all adjustments, that the manufacturer would have been required to make on account of the units sold had it been a participating manufacturer, the excess shall be released from escrow and revert back to such tobacco product manufacturer. ...

The Allocable Share Amendment calculates escrow releases by comparing the [935]*935escrow payment for an NPM’s cigarettes sold in Arkansas against its hypothetical MSA payment for those same cigarettes.

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Bluebook (online)
574 F.3d 929, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 17219, 2009 WL 2366386, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/grand-river-enterprises-six-nations-ltd-v-beebe-ca8-2009.