In a much anticipated event, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Feb. 27 on why the Exxon Mobil Corporation should not have to pay punitive damages to victims of the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.
Steve Smith and other fisherman |
According to numerous scientific studies, the area has still not fully recovered from its environmental injuries. The human toll was likewise immense, as the local economy was devastated.
In 1994, an Anchorage, Alaska, jury awarded victims of the disaster $5 billion in punitive damages. Almost 33,000 plaintiffs participated in the suit, including commercial fisherman, landowners, businesses, local governments and Native tribes. The coastal town of Cordova was the epicenter of the spill, and scores of its residents joined the case as well. The town was hit hard by the disaster, losing numerous jobs while divorce and suicide rates mushroomed.
Nonetheless, ExxonMobil has aggressively appealed the initial court ruling. Subsequent rulings have successfully cut the initial punitive damages by half. Now, by taking its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the corporation is seeking to pay no punitive damages whatsoever.
Exxon maintains that punitive damages would be excessive punishment beside the $3.5 billion in cleanup costs, compensatory payments and fines it already has paid. Claims about severe, continuing damage to the area are “simply untrue” as far as the Texas-based company is concerned.
“The environment in Prince William Sound is healthy, robust and thriving,” Exxon spokesperson Tony Cudmore told the Associated Press. “That’s the conclusion of many scientists who have done extensive studies of the Prince William Sound ecosystem.”
Residents of Cordova have grown weary of the nearly two-decade legal battle. “With this legal system the way it has been protracted out, people can’t put it behind them,” said Cordova mayor Tim Joyce. “The final recompense has never been made.”
The town lies 45 miles from the reef where the spill occurred and was not directly touched by the slick. But the spill was a crippling blow for the local economy. The town is heavily dependent on commercial fishing, especially herring. In the years after the spill, herring numbers plummeted in local waters and have yet to return to their pre-spill levels.
Fishermen’s lives wrecked by spill
Steve Smith, a 69-year-old Cordova fisherman, fears that big business will prevail.
“I really wonder, what do you do if you don’t get a just decision out of the Supreme Court,” he said on his boat Prince William. “I mean, there’s no other court to take it to. What do you got left, really?”
Steve Picou, a University of South Alabama sociologist who has been researching the effects of the spill on Cordova residents, said that reports of stress and depression were initially linked directly to the loss of jobs for fishermen. Later, he said, the stress increased because of the drawn-out court battle with Exxon.
“I find it not only ironic but tragic that the very process that is supposed to resolve the social impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill—that is, litigation—has, over time, become a source of stress and disruption itself,” Picou said.
Mike Webber, a 47-year-old Native Alaskan artist and fisherman from Cordova, said his marriage did not survive the strain. Webber carved a “shame pole” last year to commemorate the spill and will be in Washington this week with the 7-foot carved piece of cedar, which depicts former longtime Exxon chief executive Lee Raymond with dollar-sign eyes and a Pinocchio-like nose. An oil slick pours from Raymond’s mouth along with the words uttered by a top Exxon official soon after the spill, “We will make you whole.”
“Well, they didn’t,” Webber said, his voice breaking. “They just put a hole in us is what they did, right in our hearts and it hurts. And they took part of our soul.”
Exxon’s negligence the real culprit
The case centers on whether Exxon is liable for the actions of the ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood. Prior to the accident, Hazelwood had maneuvered the vessel out of the shipping lane to avoid ice. He subsequently left other crew members in charge with instructions on when to return to the shipping lane—a violation of company rules. Hazelwood also admitted to drinking alcohol prior to the incident.
Exxon’s lawyer told the court that two centuries of maritime law precluded punitive damages against the company for Hazelwood’s mistakes.
“If you look at … all of the tradition and maritime law, is that the captain or the pilot, anyone on board the ship, does not implicate in punitive damages, the company, or the shipowner,” said Walter Dellinger, Exxon’s lead attorney in the case.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that Dellinger was largely relying on the 1818 Supreme Court’s case known as The Amiable Nancy. In that decision, the court held that the owners of a U.S. ship could not be held liable for punitive damages stemming from the illegal activities of its crew.
Ginsburg said it was “an exaggeration to call it a long line of settled decisions in maritime law.”
Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing the plaintiffs, said Exxon had failed to show any legal basis for overturning the lower court’s decision. He said punitive damages are clearly allowed under maritime law, arguing that Hazelwood was in charge of a “business unit” of Exxon. Exxon knew that Hazelwood was an alcoholic, Fisher said, and did nothing about it.
“It was also common knowledge in the organization, and this came out at trial, that the idea of putting a drunken master in charge of a supertanker was a potential for disaster and incalculably raised the chances of a disaster and a catastrophic spill occurring,” he added.
“In the wake of the spill … Exxon fired one person—Captain Hazelwood,” he said. “Everybody else up, further up the chain of command, who allowed this to happen received bonuses and raises. They have taken no action inside the company to express in any meaningful way that they’ve been deterred by what happened in this incident and the amount of money they’ve had to pay.”
Even a ruling for the plaintiffs will have little effect on ExxonMobil. Like the whole of the oil industry, the corporation is reaping super-profits. In late January, ExxonMobil posted the largest annual profit ever by a U.S. company—$40.6 billion. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have noted that the $2.5 billion figure is “barely more than three weeks of Exxon’s net profits.”
Environmental destruction, like war and racism, is a direct outgrowth of the system itself. The Valdez disaster is exceptional only in its scale. A system built entirely on the creation of super-profits for corporations cannot possibly accommodate human needs, much less protect the broader ecosystem. Only socialism affords the promise of life in meaningful harmony with the world.
