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Today's dose of Alaskan outrage
Jun. 26th, 2008 08:56 amDear Supreme Court:
What the fuck.
Love, Alaska.
The ruling on the Exxon Valdez damages award finally came through yesterday, 19 years after the spill in Prince William Sound. (*dry* Ka like the wind, and no one can stand against it, indeed.) The original award, set in 1994, was $5 billion. The appeal dropped that to $2.5 billion.
The ruling dropped it another eighty percent to $507.5 million, although the ADN article says that "With accumulated interest, the new punitive damage award will total around $1 billion".
Still. Ouch. And all this from an 1818 court ruling.
People are pointing out that it's still a lot of money, and the fact that Exxon has to write a check at all is a victory, but honestly, half a billion for an oil company? It may not be chump change, but it's not much. That is, in fact, the point. This ruling reduced the award so that it's only covering actual damages, rather than being any kind of punishment.
(Sorry, I have to take a break to unclench my jaw. Holy shit, punish Exxon! They spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil and affected 11,000 miles of sea! They damaged the livelihood of thousands of fishermen! They killed sea otters and birds by the tens of thousands and screwed up the fish population for two decades so far and probably decades to come! They left the Sound and the cleanup efforts hanging for OVER A WEEK!--
Okay. Breathing now.)
And here's why everyone should care: even though this ruling applies only and specifically to maritime law, it's setting up a legal precedent for the reduction of punitive damages paid by corporations. "It will probably begin to creep into other cases where lawyers defending corporations are seeking to scale back sizable punitive damage awards, said Amar Sarwal, the chief litigation counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."
Because what big business really needs is less accountability, right?
The Anchorage Daily News has a lot of coverage on this, of course. I'm sure if I try to keep ranting, I'll say something uninformed and dumb, so go check out those articles instead.
Rrrrrrr.
What the fuck.
Love, Alaska.
The ruling on the Exxon Valdez damages award finally came through yesterday, 19 years after the spill in Prince William Sound. (*dry* Ka like the wind, and no one can stand against it, indeed.) The original award, set in 1994, was $5 billion. The appeal dropped that to $2.5 billion.
The ruling dropped it another eighty percent to $507.5 million, although the ADN article says that "With accumulated interest, the new punitive damage award will total around $1 billion".
Still. Ouch. And all this from an 1818 court ruling.
People are pointing out that it's still a lot of money, and the fact that Exxon has to write a check at all is a victory, but honestly, half a billion for an oil company? It may not be chump change, but it's not much. That is, in fact, the point. This ruling reduced the award so that it's only covering actual damages, rather than being any kind of punishment.
(Sorry, I have to take a break to unclench my jaw. Holy shit, punish Exxon! They spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil and affected 11,000 miles of sea! They damaged the livelihood of thousands of fishermen! They killed sea otters and birds by the tens of thousands and screwed up the fish population for two decades so far and probably decades to come! They left the Sound and the cleanup efforts hanging for OVER A WEEK!--
Okay. Breathing now.)
And here's why everyone should care: even though this ruling applies only and specifically to maritime law, it's setting up a legal precedent for the reduction of punitive damages paid by corporations. "It will probably begin to creep into other cases where lawyers defending corporations are seeking to scale back sizable punitive damage awards, said Amar Sarwal, the chief litigation counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."
Because what big business really needs is less accountability, right?
The Anchorage Daily News has a lot of coverage on this, of course. I'm sure if I try to keep ranting, I'll say something uninformed and dumb, so go check out those articles instead.
Rrrrrrr.
