RELEASE ORDERED OF MANY MORE TOBACCO PAPERS

Courts: The ruling by a Minnesota judge will finally expose the industry's
'skeletons to the American public,' a state official says.

St. Paul, Minn.- A judge ordered cigarette makers Saturday to release about
39,000 more internal documents, including some that the plaintiffs in
Minnesota's tobacco trial call the most significant to emerge in the case.

Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick wrote that the industry,
which had already released 33 million pages in the case, falsely asserted
attorney-client privilege to keep the documents private.

"Upon review of randomly selected documents, it has been determined that
defendants have in numerous instances claimed privilege where none is due
and blatantly abused the categorization process," Fitzpatrick wrote.

The 39,000 documents were ordered released by Monday to the state and Blue
Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which are suing tobacco companies.

"These documents are the beginning of the tobacco industry's worst
nightmare," Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III said. "We are finally
prying open the tobacco industry's closet door and exposing their skeletons
to the American public."

Michael York, an outside attorney for defendant Philip Morris, said of the
ruling: "It's wrong on the law and we're planning to mount a challenge."

Fitzpatrick wrote that Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. categorized one
document as relating to advertising even though it was a study prepared for
an unidentified Canadian affiliate of B&W's British parent company that
referred to research conducted among 16- and 17-year-olds.

The document said, "The studies reported on youngsters' motivation for
starting, their brand preferences, etc., as well as the starting behavior
of children as young as 5 years old.

The state and Blue Cross are suing the tobacco industry to recover the
$1.77 billion they say they have spent to treat smoking related illnesses.
It is the first of 40 state lawsuits against cigarette makers to go to
trial. Texas, Florida and Mississippi settled their cases.