Should Exxon pay Punitive Damages?

C

Cypress

Well-known member
Okay, they paid for the Valdez cleanup, and reimbursed some fishermen for lost income.

Exxon is whining that they shouldn't have to pay punitive damages, however. I don't pretend to know all the facts of the case, but punitive damages are an essential legal tool to hold corporations accountable, and send a signal that bad behaviour will not be tolerated.

How much is 2.5 billion, really, to ExxonMobil Corp? Seems like a drop in the bucket to me.


Exxon asks high court to void Valdez spill damages

Since the Exxon Valdez plowed into an Alaskan reef in 1989, pouring 11 million gallons of crude oil into the clear waters of Prince William Sound, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. has paid $3.1 billion in fines, cleanup costs and environmental restoration, as well as $300 million in settlements with thousands of Alaskan fishermen, cannery workers and landowners.

[snip]

Exxon already got an Alaskan jury's $5 billion punitive damages award reduced by half. Now it is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to erase it altogether. The high court discussed Exxon's case in private last week and will announce as early as today whether it will accept it
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No! That is putting conditions on the market. As long as one market remains in chains, I am a slave. As long as one market is oppressed, I cannot call myself free. God Almighty! Free them all!
 
2.5 billion is clearly far too much. To trivialize that amount is stupid as you know it is, Cypress. The corporation makes smaller profit margins than most.
 
the circuit court's conclusion:

After thorough and concerned analysis of this punitive damages awarded, I conclude that its imposition does not violate Exxon's constitutional right to due process. The award was levied as a result of fair procedure and in pursuit of the undisputedly strong, and properly circumscribed, state interests in punishing Exxon for misconduct, and in deterring any similar behavior by Exxon in waters it continues to frequent.

While the award is large, it addresses what must be characterized as extremely reprehensible misconduct. There is simply no excuse for allowing a relapsed alcoholic to pilot a supertanker in any waters, much less for three years in the treacherous and treasured waters of Prince William Sound. Exxon's knowing decision to do so was a malicious one that placed at massive risk, and ultimately seriously injured, the property and livelihood of tens of thousands of Alaskans. There is every indication the award before us reasonably addresses that egregious behavior, and nothing in the record that suggests it resulted from passion, bias, or caprice.
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spending 5 minutes to look up some facts would be out of the question for Cypress. You are clueless on the facts.:readit:
 
Watermark said:
They have a right to appeal. If you equate appealing injustice to "whining" then you clearly have no concept of liberal democracy.
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I didn't mention anything about their right to appeal, I said they should quit whining. No need to read anything too complex into my comment. I know they have a right to appeal, that's a given.

And if you use a casual comment from me to make a judgement about my alleged lack of knowledge about liberal democracy then I have to think that you're rash in your judgements and your comments.

Punitive damages are good. They're good for Exxon because they suffer a penalty beyond reparation. That provides both a specific and general deterrent. Exxon will now have to think (as much as a corporation "thinks") about the effects of its negligence in future. It has been given the message that merely fixing up the effects of its negligence isn't sufficient, that it will be facing extra financial imposts. That provides a specific deterrent. Other corporations that think they can get away with reparations will also have to think about the effect of punitive damages.

And Exxon should stop whining.
 
Diuretic said:
I didn't mention anything about their right to appeal, I said they should quit whining. No need to read anything too complex into my comment. I know they have a right to appeal, that's a given.

And if you use a casual comment from me to make a judgement about my alleged lack of knowledge about liberal democracy then I have to think that you're rash in your judgements and your comments.

Punitive damages are good. They're good for Exxon because they suffer a penalty beyond reparation. That provides both a specific and general deterrent. Exxon will now have to think (as much as a corporation "thinks") about the effects of its negligence in future. It has been given the message that merely fixing up the effects of its negligence isn't sufficient, that it will be facing extra financial imposts. That provides a specific deterrent. Other corporations that think they can get away with reparations will also have to think about the effect of punitive damages.

And Exxon should stop whining.
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Yeah, people should be executed for accidents.
 
Diuretic said:
Oh, hyperbole! :clink:
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Punitive damages are often given out in plain offensive amounts, like the single mother who was sued several thousand times her actual damages by the IRAA, several times her actual networth, and it was all going to record company profits. She didn't even make any profit off of her "infringement". The rich ass doctor who slashes someones spinal chord, however, has his punitive damages capped at 500,000, no matter if he caused millions and millions of actual damages, which is likely a trivial amount of his networth.
 
Watermark said:
Punitive damages are often given out in plain offensive amounts, like the single mother who was sued several thousand times her actual damages by the IRAA, several times her actual networth, and it was all going to record company profits. She didn't even make any profit off of her "infringement". The rich ass doctor who slashes someones spinal chord, however, has his punitive damages capped at 500,000, no matter if he caused millions and millions of actual damages, which is likely a trivial amount of his networth.
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That's a better response.
 
Well, that's why I have a bitterness towards punative damages. They are often given out in an arbitrary and random manner. I wouldn't know enough about the Exxon Valdez case to give a definitive yes or no.
 
Watermark said:
Well, that's why I have a bitterness towards punative damages. They are often given out in an arbitrary and random manner. I wouldn't know enough about the Exxon Valdez case to give a definitive yes or no.
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And I don't know enough about how punitive damages are calculated to defend or condemn the amount decided on in the Exxon Valdez case. But I assume the appellate court will sort it out.
 
Watermark said:
However, their punative damages are at least only equal to their actual damages, rather than being several thousand times greater.
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If you're referencing the downloading music case - yes, it's absolutely excessive. If it were a criminal case I'm pretty sure an appellate court would condemn it as a "crushing" sentence, leaving no hope of rehabilitation for the defendant. But it's not. It's about crushing her so that everyone else craps themselves, stops using Limewire, Frostwire, the Mules etc and heads back to their official music store to buy instead of downloading. So she is being chewed up in the maw of the system and it's doing what it does best, enforcing privilege and protecting vested property rights and if it has to destroy one individual, then that's a price to be paid.
 
Diuretic said:
If you're referencing the downloading music case - yes, it's absolutely excessive. If it were a criminal case I'm pretty sure an appellate court would condemn it as a "crushing" sentence, leaving no hope of rehabilitation for the defendant. But it's not. It's about crushing her so that everyone else craps themselves, stops using Limewire, Frostwire, the Mules etc and heads back to their official music store to buy instead of downloading. So she is being chewed up in the maw of the system and it's doing what it does best, enforcing privilege and protecting vested property rights and if it has to destroy one individual, then that's a price to be paid.
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The concept of destroying a single individual to "make an example" is incompatible with a liberal democracy. It rings of barbarism. The law was designed to catch people who made hundreds of thousands profiting off of sharing illegal things in the 80's; what was caught by prosecutors was usually only a small amount of the violation. It doesn't apply today at all in filesharing. Sometimes, a penalty is so harsh and wrong that it just violates our very humanity, no matter what the crime was. This is a case, and it's morally bankrupt of you and evil to defend such clear barbarism.

And anyone, the concept of upping punative damages to ridiculous levels to catch purported violations that you have no proof of is obviously also incompatible with liberal democracy.

Copyrights are not "property" in the usual since of the word. This is clear because they are even judged by an entirely different set of rules. The damages caused by filesharing are so trivial as to not even be worth the time to prosecute. I'm an author and even I realize that the copyright laws are merely a gift of society, it is not something I am owed.
 
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