Portrait Of Excess and Greed
Friday, December 22, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday cut in half a $5 billion jury award for punitive damages against Exxon Mobil Corp. in the 1989 Valdez oil spill that smeared black goo across roughly 1,500 miles of Alaskan coastline.
The case, one of the nation's longest-running, non-criminal legal disputes, stems from a 1994 decision by an Anchorage jury to award the punitive damages to 34,000 fishermen and other Alaskans. Their property and livelihoods were harmed when the Valdez oil tanker struck a charted reef, spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil.
In the third quarter of 2006, ExxonMobil reported earning about $10.5 billion in net income, and in the first nine months of 2006, it earned just under $30 billion.
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Remember the Exxon Valdez spill in '89 the one with the drunken captain that decimated the Alaskan coastline and destroyed the livelihoods of many people? Yep that one and since '89 Exxon has held up paying with litigation. From what I have read before, Exxon had put money aside for the settlement and since then has been collecting interest on it. Talk about screwing the American public and making money on a tragedy. Another reason why you should avoid any Exxon Mobil station when filling up your gas tank.
Posted by mardenhill 12/22/2006 01:24:00 PM
Labels: Science
