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Philip Morris Loss in Oregon Court Is Fifth Straight West Coast Setback  

Philip Morris said it will appeal "very promptly" if the judge doesn't overturn the verdict. Judges need to tell juries to "try the case in front of them and not make social policy," said William S. Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris's associate general counsel.

Mr. Ohlemeyer said the company didn't get a fair trial, pointing to the fact that documents that had been ruled inadmissible as evidence were inadvertently given to the jurors during their deliberations. Other documents, he said, had been improperly marked in a way designed to draw jurors' attention to certain passages.

Mr. Ohlemeyer also said the company would ask the judge to reduce the size of the punitive award, which he said was "clearly excessive" and "obviously unreasonable." Under the law, punitive damages must bear a reasonable relationship to compensatory damages. . .

The most troublesome legal problem for the industry, however, analysts say, is its losing record on the West Coast, especially in California. The largest of the industry's three straight losses in the Golden State came last summer, when a Los Angeles jury awarded more than $3 billion to a former smoker with lung cancer. A judge later reduced the award to $105.5 million. All of the California verdicts are being appealed.

"Clearly, the strategic changes that Philip Morris has made to the defense of these cases has to date amounted to naught," said Martin Feldman, a tobacco analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in New York.

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