Exxon Valdez ruling frustrates Alaska plaintiffs
Date: 12-Nov-01
Country: USA
Author: Yereth Rosen
"We have bought a run of another year of proceedings, maybe a year and a half," said Dave Oesting, lead attorney for the plaintiff team that won the verdict from a U.S. District Court jury in 1994.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled that the punitive award - then the largest ever assessed against a corporation - was excessive. It sent the case back to the trial court for adjustment.
The approximately 40,000 fishermen, natives, property owners, local governments and others who sued Exxon will have to present their case again about the appropriate punishment for the 1989 spill.
To speed resolution, Gov. Tony Knowles hopes to bring the opposing parties together to start settlement talks.
Knowles wants to confer next week with attorneys for Exxon Mobil and the plaintiffs "to see if they can find an out-of-court settlement to bring finality to this whole ordeal," the governor's press secretary, Bob King, said.
Oesting said there was little hope for any such deal, adding, "The two sides in this case are pretty hard-bitten characters."
An Exxon Mobil spokesman declined to comment on Knowles' idea.
One of the Alaska plaintiffs said she would welcome settlement talks to end legal fights over the 11 million gallon (42 million litre) spill.
"It would be a good thing if they tried something," said Eleanor McMullen, tribal chief for the native village of Port Graham on the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula.
'PRETTY DISGUSTED, PRETTY UPSET'
The appeals ruling left her "pretty disgusted, pretty upset," McMullen said. Villagers had been hoping to use the damage award to repair some of the community buildings "but I guess we won't get the chance to do that."
Such plans were common among spill plaintiffs, said Dr. Steven Picou, a social scientist with the University of South Alabama who has studied the spill's effects on the communities.
A survey last year of residents in and around the Prince William Sound town of Cordova found that the vast majority planned to use their portions of the punitive fine to pay off debts or to reinvest in fishing operations or local businesses, Picou said.
The prospect of more delays will compound stress in the area, already suffering from a deteriorating fishing economy, Picou said.
The next likely step in the case will be arguments before U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland, who presided over the civil trial. Oesting said he expects a hearing by next spring.
The case may wind up being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, adding years to its life, Oesting said.
"The statement made by our adversaries is they're not going to pay any punitive damages until they've exhausted every legal recourse," he said.
In addition to assessing the punitive fine, the jury at the 1994 trial ordered Exxon to pay $287 million in compensation to salmon and herring fishermen. Compensation to many other plaintiffs was determined by settlements.
Exxon Mobil has said it spent more than $2 billion on the cleaning up the spill and does not deserve further punishment.
In 1991, the energy giant settled civil and criminal claims made by the U.S. and Alaska governments for natural resource damages. That $1.025 billion deal, then a record for an environmental case, was paid out over 10 years. Exxon made its last payment in September.
Most of the money went into a fund administered by a joint federal and state council charged with managing restoration projects, including the purchase and preservation of coastal lands.
The spill continues to have some localized effects in Prince William Sound, said Molly McCammon, executive director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.
Sea otters and sea ducks show evidence of struggles with hydrocarbon exposure, she said. Circumstantial evidence ties Exxon oil to the collapse of herring stocks, she added, and there is still oil buried at a few isolated beach spots.
"It's not quite the doom-and-gloom that I kno
