Oregon high court upholds $79.5M damage award against Philip Morris News
Oregon high court upholds $79.5M damage award against Philip Morris

[JURIST] The Oregon Supreme Court [official website] Thursday upheld an award of $79.5 million in punitive damages [opinion] that a jury in 1999 directed Philip Morris USA to pay to relatives of an Oregon man who died of lung cancer from smoking. The same jury set the level of compensatory damages at $821,000. The Oregon high court called the cigarette marketing tactics of Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group, "reprehensible" while Philip Morris vowed to again appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court [official website], which had ordered the Oregon court to reconsider the original award in 2003. Philip Morris claims that the Oregon court's decision conflicts with the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in State Farm v. Campbell [PDF opinion] which sets guidelines for calculating punitive damages. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.