Justices Take Up Battle Over Exxon Valdez

Justices Take Up Battle Over Exxon Valdez
The Exxon Valdez oil spill, which caused a 3,000-square-mile oil slick and still affects Alaska’s fisheries after nearly 19 years, was a “tragedy,” Exxon’s lawyer told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. But the company has been punished enough by $3.4 billion in criminal fines, cleanup costs and compensation payments, the lawyer added, arguing that the $2.5 billion in punitive damages approved by a federal appeals court served no additional “public purpose.” Exxon’s appeal of the biggest punitive damage award ever upheld in federal court led to a lively Supreme Court argument in which everything was open to dispute, from the significance of a 200-year-old case about robbery on the high seas to the world of modern maritime commerce in which a 1,000-foot tanker like the Exxon Valdez is considered a separate “business unit” in the organization chart of its corporate owner.

These pricks, these record setting multi billion dollar quarterly profit oil pricks have managed to dodge the punitive damages against them all this time since 1989 when one of their drunk captains ran aground and caused one of the worst oil slick of all time, they argue that it wasn’t their fault the captain was drunk and that there is no additional reason in forcing them to pay $2.5 Billion as it wouldn’t be of any public purpose – perhaps Exxon don’t understand the term Punitive Damages – they are awarded to reform or deter actions like this, and they are very high so you won’t forget the lesson, that these maggots have managed to avoid paying their pound of flesh is just another blot on an industry as soaked in blood and injustice as they are in oil.