"Look, there is no defense of BP which has an execrable safety record in this country, from the refinery disaster in Texas in '05, the Morris Slope leak in '06, all of that and so no apology from BP. But if you don't want to live in a Northern Hemisphere Venezuela, you ought to be a little queasy about the fact that a president, any president of any party, using raw political power, without recourse to courts that exist for this sort of thing, under laws, with due process, essentially confiscates $20 billion from a publicly held corporation, about half of its shares held by Americans, to be dispensed, again, with out judicial supervision, as the political branch sees fit. That is worrisome."
Rep. Joe Barton's charge that the escrow account amounted to a "shakedown" failed miserably. This new GOP offensive - that this escrow account disregards "the rule of law" - is the charge du jour against the Obama Administration's handling of the Gulf oil spill.
Since the Exxon Valdez spill seems to be the precedent by which oil spills are now measured, maybe there's some value in looking how that worked out in terms of compensating those who were most effected by that spill.
Keep in mind the Valdez accident occurred in March, 1989.
The fight over the punitive damages reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Since then, Exxon filed more than 60 petitions and appeals, sought 23 time extensions and filed more than 1,000 motions, briefs, requests and demands. The company requested a reduction in the damages amount, a reversal of the verdict and a new trial, claiming jury misconduct and jury tampering, according to Rodgers.
More than 3,000 claimants died waiting for an outcome in the case. (Link)
The first trial ended five years after the accident and ordered Exxon to pay $5B in damages to fisherman, Alaska natives, local businesses and others. A federal appeals court later reduced those damages to $2.5B and In 2008, nineteen years after the accident, the Supreme Court reduced Exxon's punitive damages to $507M.
The GOP's new concern for the rule of law, after years of not giving a shit about the rule of law, is good news. But the court's track record for being an expeditious way to address litigant's financial claims, at least based on the Exxon Valdez case, is pretty lousy.
I seriously doubt there are a whole lot of Gulf fisherman, hotel workers and local businesses who are concerned, like George Will, about circumventing a judicial system that takes nineteen years to provides damages to folks who need the money immediately.
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