Interesting history on oil spill.
The scales of justice were favorable for the Exxon spill in 1989.
The supreme court "vacated the fine" .Exxon only had to pay one 10th of the sum for "punitive damages" many many years later.
After the Exxon Valdez spill, Exxon fought a $5 billion fine for punitive damages for two decades. It won. The fine was cut down to $4 billion, then to $2.5 billion. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which found that Exxon’s actions were “worse than negligent but less than malicious,” and vacated the fine. The judgment limited punitive damages to the compensatory damages, which were calculated as $507.5 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/08sorkin.html?bl
Here is a reminder of how much of this deadly stuff gets into the ocean
Most of the spills are from the middle east and Nigeria (this is where most of the oil comes from) but with oil running low, wells are being drilled in deeper oceans. Oil extraction is destined to become more expensive and the BP spill may show to be the pinnacle of when the world realizes we must stop using oil
--
