Business Notes AWARDS

When an executive is killed before the apex of his career, how much should the company responsible for his death have to pay his estate? That was the question confronting the jury in a two-week federal trial in Manhattan involving the death of IBM Vice President Philip ("Don") Estridge, who was killed along with his wife and 124 other passengers in the 1985 crash of a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet in Dallas. Last week the jury came up with an answer: $7,975,000. The award is believed to be the largest ever in a case involving an airplane death. Delta is considering an appeal.

The award was based on how much Estridge, who was survived by three daughters, could have earned in his career. The easygoing executive, whose annual salary was $240,000 when he died at 48, had led IBM into the personal- computer field, and colleagues considered him capable of rising to the top of the world's No. 1 computer company.