March 17, 1982

Marshall Field & Company said yesterday that it would accept a $310 million takeover offer from Batus Inc., a major retailer owned by B.A.T. Industries of London. Four years ago, the Chicago-based retailer rejected a much more generous offer from Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc. The decision by Marshall Field's board to accept the Batus offer reflects the retailer's opposition to a rival bid from a group headed by Carl C. Icahn, the New York financier and arbitrageur. Mr. Icahn, whose group has accumulated 29.3 percent of Field's stock since January, said late yesterday that he was irate over the Batus offer. ''We are considering litigation against Field,'' he said in a telephone interview. ''They are disregarding the rights of shareholders and really dissuading other buyers from making an offer for the Field's stock.''

A tentative trend toward lower interest rates was aborted yesterday as four major banks raised their prime lending rates half a percentage point, to 16 1/2 percent, reversing a downward move they made March 8. As a result, the prime rate at all the nation's major banks now stands at the 16 1/2 percent level. The four big banks that announced they would return their prime to the 16 1/2 percent level were the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, the Bankers Trust Company and the First National Bank of Chicago.

''I can now inform you, dear comrades, that, striving to facilitate a just agreement on a major reduction of nuclear weapons by both sides in Europe, and desirous of setting a good example, the Soviet leadership has taken a decision to introduce, unilaterally, a moratorium on the development of medium-range nuclear armaments in the European part of the U.S.S.R.'' - Leonid I. Brezhnev, to convention of Soviet trade unions. (A6:1.)

BRION, one of the greatest wine estates of France, was down and out in 1933, along with much of the world economy. The vineyard had been ranked as a premier grand cru, or first great growth, in the Bordeaux classification of 1855, but the market for its celebrated wines had shrunk, and its proprietor had committed a tactical error. He had decided to bypass the Bordeaux wine trade and maximize profits by selling directly to stores and restaurants, eliminating the middlemen who traditionally marketed the best Bordeaux wines. Rumors circulated that the Haut-Brion vines had been afflicted with blight, that they were no longer capable of yielding the wines of extraordinary richness and finesse that had made the chateau famous. Critics began whispering that Haut-Brion no longer merited its premier cru status, that it should be demoted from the exalted company of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Latour and Chateau Margaux, the only other properties that received premier cru recognition in 1855. The proprietor, Andre Gibert, decided to give up. He offered Haut-Brion to the city of Bordeaux on the condition that the property be maintained in perpetuity. The city leaders, deciding that forever was too long, turned him down. So Haut-Brion, with a history dating back to 1509, a property that Thomas Jefferson described in 1787 as the best in all of France for pleasing the American palate, was thrown on the real-estate market.

Hundreds of Manhattan-bound passengers were trapped for more than an hour in a PATH train that caught fire under the Hudson River yesterday morning before rescuers led them to safety through an emergency exit at the riverbank edge of Greenwich Village. Eighty-four persons were treated for smoke inhalation and 19 of them were admitted to hospitals for observation. No serious injuries were reported.