Philip Morris Cos Inc

A San Francisco judge Tuesday cut in half a landmark $50-million punitive damages award against Philip Morris but excoriated the firm and denied its request to retry the case of a former Marlboro smoker who contracted lung cancer. The ruling by San Francisco Superior Court Judge John E. Munter means that the nation's biggest tobacco company must pay $26.5 million to Patricia Henley of Los Angeles--including $1.5 million in compensatory and $25 million in punitive damages.

A San Francisco judge Tuesday cut in half a landmark $50-million punitive damages award against Philip Morris but excoriated the firm and denied its request to retry the case of a former Marlboro smoker who contracted lung cancer. The ruling by San Francisco Superior Court Judge John E. Munter means that the nation's biggest tobacco company must pay $26.5 million to Patricia Henley of Los Angeles--including $1.5 million in compensatory and $25 million in punitive damages.

One of Orange County's pioneer developers of planned communities, the Mission Viejo Co., will be sold to J.F. Shea Co., an expanding Southern California building firm, it was announced Friday. The deal is expected to fetch more than $400 million, although terms were not disclosed by Philip Morris Cos. Inc., which has owned the Mission Viejo Co. since 1972. Shea will acquire about 900 acres of undeveloped land in Mission Viejo and Aliso Viejo, and 3,600 acres in Colorado.

Advertising Spending: National Latino ad spending tops $720 million, according to Hispanic Business magazine, which released its annual Media Markets Guide on Wednesday. Advertisers directed $721.5 million in ad dollars to Latino consumer-targeted print, radio and television in 1993, the magazine reported. Emerging as the most active in that market were Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch Inc., McDonald's Corp., Coca-Cola Co., Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive Co.

The California Supreme Court sent a former smoker's suit against Philip Morris Cos. Inc. back to the appellate level for review. The move comes months after the court handed the tobacco industry a partial victory in a verdict that gave cigarette makers some protection from smoker lawsuits. The case going back to the appellate court was brought by Patricia Henley, who has inoperable lung cancer. She was awarded $1.

Philip Morris Cos. Inc. announced today it has ended its agreement to sell Seven-Up to Pepsico Inc. for $380 million. The announcement follows the Federal Trade Commission's decision on Friday to attempt to block that deal as well as Coca-Cola Co.'s proposed $470-million acquisition of Dr Pepper Co. The agency cited fears that the takeovers would reduce competition in the distribution and sale of soft drinks.

Kraft to Cut 1,000 Salaried Jobs: Kraft General Foods Inc. said it will cut 1,000 salaried jobs from its U.S. operations to reduce costs and boost profits at a time of intense food price competition. The giant food maker said it offered early retirement to 1,200 employees and expects most of the job reductions to come through that program and attrition. Some jobs may be eliminated outright to reach the target, said a spokesman at the company's Glenview, Ill., headquarters near Chicago.

A survey of the 100 highest-paid in-house corporate lawyers shows that the biggest salaries and bonuses in 1994 went to the top legal officers at Merrill Lynch & Co., Viacom Inc. and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. The survey, which appears in the September issue of Corporate Counsel magazine, reports that Stephen Hammerman at Merrill Lynch was at the top of the list with total cash compensation of $2.80 million. He was followed by Philippe Dauman at Viacom, who made $2.

General Foods Corp. said Friday that it has agreed to be taken over by Philip Morris Cos. Inc. for about $5.7 billion, to form the nation's biggest consumer products company. Under the agreement to undertake the largest non-oil acquisition in corporate history, the tobacco giant will buy all of General Foods' 47.3 million shares at $120 per share in cash. The merger is subject to the approval of both firms' boards of directors.

A U.S. District Court in South Carolina has denied class-action status for a lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers, marking the second such denial in a week. The case, known as Aksamit et al. vs. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. et al, was filed on behalf of South Carolina smokers who were allegedly injured as a result of smoking the defendant companies' cigarettes. In a decision Friday, U.S.