[thelist] HTML row question

[Maisha Walker]

I have a pretty basic HTML question.

I have a table that has 3 columns and 5 rows but the cells overlap.

The first column is one big row, the second column is 5 rows and the third
column is also one big row with an image that forces the row height for the
entire table

The problem im having is that in the center column, each of the 5 rows is
much taller than it should be if you were to just look at the content in
each cell, presumably because it's making up the height being forced by the
tall image in the 3rd row.  But the rows are different (seemingly random)
heights.

My question is twofold:

1. How is each row's height determined in a situation like this where the
actual content of the cell is not tall, but there is additional height being
forced by another cell.

2. Is there anyway to control this besides putting a tall spacer image in
one of the rows that would make up the exact remainig height of the image
that's forcing this issue in the third column?

I hope I've explained this clearly ....

Many thanks for any suggestions or leads - I've done some google searches on
"table row heights" but found mostly references to css...

Maisha