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Smokescreen: The Ifs and Buts of the Tobacco Settlement 

The problem, economists and legal experts who have studied the deal say, isn't that the damages won by the states are too small . . . It's that 99 percent of the total settlement is really a disguised tax hike.

Taxing cigarettes more heavily may or may not be a good idea, the critics say, but labeling as "damages" what is effectively a sales tax is misleading and will create a boondoggle for trial lawyers and a windfall for the smaller tobacco companies.

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By calling the settlement 'damages' it makes it seem reasonable to pay the lawyers a lot. If you called it taxes, you wouldn't expect to give lawyers a fraction of the tax.
Paul Klemperer, an economist at Oxford University. Quoted in <i>Smokescreen: The Ifs and Buts of the Tobacco Settlement</i>