Just too late for the June wedding season, the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has reached a settlement with Federated and May department stores – parents of such retailers as Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, and Lord & Taylor – for anti-competitive practices involving their bridal gift registries.

Mr. Spitzer accused Federated and May of pressuring tableware manufacturers Lenox and Waterford into canceling a plan to sell tableware to a retail competitor, Bed, Bath & Beyond. According to the attorney general’s press release, this deal constituted an “unlawful arrangement to boycott Bed, Bath & Beyond” that “denies consumers the benefits of greater choice and lower prices.” The press release noted that anti-competitive activity violates the Donnelly Act, the state’s antitrust law.

Under the settlement, announced August 10, the companies – Federated Department Stores, May Department Stores, Lenox Inc., and Waterford Wedgwood U.S.A. – will pay a total of $2.9 million to the state.

We are all for aggressive law enforcement. But the settlement announced this week is flawed on at least two counts. First of all, the money the companies were forced to pay is going to the state treasury, rather than being returned to the consumers who were harmed by higher prices resulting from the lack of competition. A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, Maritere Arce, said that it would be “practically impossible to determine who had bought what tableware at what higher prices.”

But this is hardly the first time a government has charged a company with anticompetitive behavior. When Microsoft settles class-action suits with individual states, the latest example being New Mexico on August 3, it provides hardware and software vouchers to customers who bought specific Microsoft products within certain dates. Stacey Drake, a company spokeswoman, explained that vouchers totaling less than $100 can be obtained by simply filling out a claim form; no proof of purchase is necessary. If Microsoft can compensate those who were actually harmed by corporate wrongdoing, why can’t New York State and these department stores? The whole point of a bridal registry is that there’s a registry, or record, of the presents and the gift-givers.

Financial settlements that benefit nonvictims are turning into a pattern for Mr. Spitzer. In 2003, Philip Anschutz entered into a $4.4 million settlement with Mr. Spitzer. The money did not go to Qwest stockholders or to shareholders who bought shares in companies whose hot initial public offerings had been allocated by brokers to Mr. Anschutz. It went to Spitzer-approved charities, including the Hispanic Federation of New York City and the Legal Aid Society.

The second problem with the settlement is that although the companies have agreed to pay the state, none of them have admitted that they did anything wrong. According to a Federated Department Stores press release, the company decided to settle “in order to avoid the potential of protracted court action and the unnecessary distraction to its business.” Ms. Arce said that the attorney general had decided to settle because “this was the most efficient way to solve this problem.” Efficient, maybe, but just? Having already denied financial justice to individual consumers, this settlement allows companies and the individuals who work there to avoid taking responsibility, thus nullifying any chance of a moral victory.