HOUSTON - A group of attorneys who negotiated Texas' multibillion-dollar tobacco settlement from cigarette companies in 1998 donated $8 million Tuesday to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"We were blessed with the result of the tobacco case. It just makes sense to us to help continue the fight against cancer,." said attorney John Eddie Williams of Houston.
The cancer center, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, is devoted exclusively to cancer patient care, research, education and prevention.
The other attorneys who made the donation were: F. Kenneth Bailey of Houston; Harold Nix and C. Cary Patterson of Daingerfield; John O'Quinn of Houston; and Walter Umphrey of Beaumont.
They were among a group of attorneys who helped engineer the state's $17.3 billion tobacco settlement. They received $3.3 billion in legal fees.
The $8 million the attorneys donated will be placed in the center's President's Excellence Fund, which supports new research projects, said Dr. John Mendelsohn, president of M.D. Anderson.
Such groundbreaking research can't receive outside funding until researchers offer preliminary data showing their proposals and ideas can work, said Dr. Lee Ellis, an associate professor of cancer biology at the center.
The new funding will help support ongoing research at the center, some intended to develop a vaccine that would destroy cancer cells while protecting healthy ones.
The attorneys have made other donations since the tobacco lawsuit was settled.
Umphrey was one of three lawyers who donated $20 million in 1998 to Baylor University. He graduated from Baylor's law school.
In June 2000, O'Quinn donated $1 million to the American Lung Association of Texas.
Some of the lawyers who made the donation - Nix, O'Quinn, Umphrey and Williams - are being investigated by Texas Attorney General John Cornyn.
Cornyn, a Republican, wants the lawyers to address accusations that his predecessor, Democrat Dan Morales, may have solicited large sums of money from litigators he considered hiring for the state's lucrative anti-tobacco suit.
Morales and the lawyers have repeatedly denied that any improper solicitations were made.
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