Industry executives said similar fees, often referred to as contingency payments, were widely paid to brokers and consultants by the employee benefits companies.
The deal, to be concluded in three months, should end a legal battle over contingency payments to the plant's owner, a private Brazilian company called MPX Energia.
James Strachan QC tried to suggest Alex had confused the contingency payments for phase one and phase two, but Alex was having none of it.
EDF believes the project will cost £16bn but the EC claimed construction costs alone by the time the plant is built in 2023 will be more than £24bn with a further possible £10bn of contingency payments.
The same could be said of Bates, whose club would have received £500,000 had Sheffield United remained in the Premier League and been required to honour contingency payments written into the contracts of players transferred between the clubs.
"It's no surprise that Mr. Spitzer is pursuing these contingency payments in the employee benefits area," said Terry Havens, the chief executive of Havensure, a small employee benefits consulting firm in Cincinnati.
The commission also fined the firm $2,000 for making the contingency payments, but Alan S. Plofsky, the executive director, stressed that Crossroads had inadvertently, not intentionally, violated Connecticut's lobbying laws.
Mr. Finley and Mr. Kelly argued, successfully, that the fees were not illegal because they were established before a strict state law was passed in 1995 barring lobbyists from receiving contingency fees, payments that vary in amount depending on how large a contract a consultant helps a client land from the state treasurer's office.
Timing, contingency type payments, things like escrow.
