NEW YORK — After fighting a four-year legal battle to keep his $188 million pay package, former New York Stock Exchange chief Richard Grasso triumphed yesterday when an appeals court threw out the final charges against him. Last week, a different appeals court tossed out four other pay-related charges against him.

In response to yesterday's appellate ruling, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said the case was closed.

The case, brought by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2004, had hinged on whether Grasso's pay violated a state law requiring pay at not-for-profit enterprises to be "reasonable."

But yesterday's ruling sidestepped that issue, focusing instead on the 2006 merger between the NYSE and Archipelago which transformed the Big Board into a public company.

Writing for the majority, Judge James McGuire said it made no sense to demand repayment from Grasso, since the entity to which the money would be returned was no longer not-for-profit. "The Attorney general's authority to prosecute ... lapsed with the merger," McGuire wrote.