The Oregon Court of Appeals vacated a $150-million jury verdict against tobacco company Philip Morris and ordered a new trial to determine damages in a sick-smoker case, the Associated Press reported May 17.

The original jury award in the 2002 case, which centered on claims that low-tar cigarettes were less deadly than regular cigarettes, had been cut by the trial judge to $100 million. In the latest ruling, the appeals court vacated the jury award altogether and called for a new trial to determine punitive damages.

Tobacco industry lawyers had challenged the jury's $168,000 compensatory-damages award as well as the punitive-damages award, saying that the latter should not have been higher than nine times the former under a formula established by the U.S. Supreme Court.