Did RJR's pool haul snooker ex-partner?

Add another file to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s thick dossier of pending lawsuits. This time the plaintiff, a professional billiards group, is suing the cigarette maker for destroying its financial health.

Winston-Salem-based RJR backed the Pro Billiards Tour Association's 14-tournament schedule in 1996, assuring the organization, according to PBTA Director Don Mackey, it "had plans to build us the way they had NASCAR."

But the partnership quickly went up in smoke. The next March, RJR pulled out as a sponsor. It was too late to get a replacement, so the PBTA canceled that year's tour. The straw that broke the group's back was what RJR did next: hire the tournament director and launch a tour of its own.

This May, the PBTA sued in federal court in Greensboro, alleging RJR sponsored the '96 tour merely to "pick its brain." The suit claims the cigarette maker bled the group - which started '96 with $1.2 million and ended $1 million in the hole - to eliminate competition. "They went out of their way to bankrupt, destroy and discredit us," Mackey says.

Initially, the Spring Hill, Fla.-based organization, formed by players in 1991, held its nine-ball tournaments in hotels or casinos at little or no cost. At RJR's urging, the suit alleges, it rented space for the renamed Camel Pro Billiards Series in large convention centers and arenas, at about $75,000 a week. RJR put up $251,500 in prize money but didn't promote the tournaments as it promised, Mackey says.

RJR attorney Andy Copenhaver says there was "no meeting of the minds" on the partnership's future. When it became clear the PBTA was hurting financially, he says, the cigarette maker backed away.

The PBTA has eliminated $700,000 of debt by incorporating and selling stock to players and other investors. Still, it couldn't afford to host a tour this year. RJR, which retained the Camel Pro name, has seven tournaments on its schedule.

Vindication, Mackey says, will come when the PBTA gets its day in court. "We're going to take this old camel and turn it into a horse's ass."