Valdez spill fine slashed - June 26, 2008
The Exxon Valdez oil spill just got a lot less costly, for Exxon at least. America’s highest court has slashed a fine imposed on the company from $2.5 billion to $507 million (Supreme Court pdf).
The case concerned punitive damages on the company, rather than compensation for real damage. The court found that these punitive damages could not exceed the value that had already been put on compensation, which was $507 million.
The money would have gone to fishermen and native Alaskans, and it had already been reduced from an initial award of $5 billion. While commerce groups and Exxon have welcomed the decision, the ruling has not gone down well in some other quarters.
Liberal group People for the American Way, for example, say: “Exxon was responsible for one of the greatest environmental disasters our country has seen, and the Supreme Court let them off with a slap on the wrist.”
Ross Mullins, fisherman and founder of the Prince William Sound Fishermen Plaintiffs' Committee, told the Dallas Morning News, “It is so depressing to me that this case has finally come to this place. My faith in our legal and political system is at a very low point.”
Exxon-Mobil’s 2007 profits were just over $40 billion and the highest ever for a US corporation.
Alaskan responses below the fold.
The LA Times has been speaking to the people of Cordova, who were hit hard by the spill. Reducing the payout, says the paper, will mean payouts of $15,000 per person rather than $76,500. Bankruptcy and retirement problems may result.
“I'm expecting a call that someone I know has jumped out a building,” says resident Evan Beedle. “That’s how bad it is.”
In the NY Times former fisherman Andrew Wills says “This is a knife in the gut.”
There are still unanswered questions from the ruling, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Rounding up other news sources it asks: whether maritime companies are responsible for a skipper’s bad behaviour and whether the one-to-one ratio on punitive and compensatory damages will apply outside maritime law.
“It’s a sad day in American history when the highest court in the land allows a corporation to escape its responsibilities after devastating Alaskan lives, lands and waters,” says Ethan Berkowitz, a Democrat currently seeking to be Alaska’s Congressman (press release on Alaska Report).
Fellow Democrat and potential Congress man Mark Begich has also expressed outrage (press release on Alaska Report).
The State’s Republican governor is also unhappy. “While the decision brings some degree of closure to Alaskans suffering from 19 years of litigation and delay, the Court gutted the jury’s decision on punitive damages,” says Sarah Palin.
Image: EXXON VALDEZ Oil Spill Trustee Council
Comments
Intro
What shall we do with a drunken sailor, (3×)
Early in the morning?
Chorus
Hoo–ray/Wey–hey/Heave-ho and up she rises, (3×)
Early in the morning!
Put 'im in charge of an Exxon tanker, (3×)
Early in the morning!
(from Wikipedia: Drunken Sailor)
Posted by: Jon D. Moulton | June 26, 2008 10:11 PM
Thats an awful waste of monay and even worse awful destruction of the enviornment
Posted by: john | June 28, 2008 01:02 AM