Black Wave: The Legacy Of The Exxon Valdez

I just watched this documentary, Black Wave: The Legacy Of The Exxon Valdez, which is produced by CBC. It upset me very much. I am angry to the cold blood Exxon and feel sad for those people in the fisheries town Cordova and all wildlife in and near Prince William Sound.

Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez (Saturday July 18, 2009 at 7 pm on CBC-TV)

Almost twenty years after the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska the citizens of the town of Cordova are still dealing with the environmental and social impacts, as well as the financial and legal fallout of the spill. Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez is a poignant reminder that the effects of North America's biggest environmental catastrophe are still with us. Over the years they have profoundly altered the lives of tens of thousands of people, reducing many of them to poverty and despair.
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Eventually a successful class-action suit, involving 32,000 people, brought the plaintiffs a huge victory when the jury ordered Exxon to pay five billion dollars in compensation. That should have been the end of the story, but it wasn't. Battalions of Exxon's lawyers started a drawn-out judicial war that dragged through the U.S. legal system. When the case finally ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, it reduced the award to one tenth of its original amount. The decision, a victory for ExxonMobil, was a bitter defeat for the people of Cordova who are still trying to rebuild their lives.

Black Wave: The Legacy Of The Exxon Valdez
In the early hours of March 24th 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker runs aground in Alaska. It discharges millions of gallons of crude oil. The incident becomes the biggest environmental catastrophe in North American history.
For twenty years, Riki Ott and the fishermen of the little town of Cordova, Alaska have waged the longest legal battle in U.S. history against the world’s most powerful oil company – ExxonMobil. They tell us all about the environmental, social and economic consequences of the black wave that changed their lives forever. This is the legacy of the Exxon Valdez.

Facts courtesy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council
* 11 million gallons or 257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tonnes of oil was spilled. * This is roughly equivalent to 125 olympic-sized swimming pools.
* Approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline were impacted by the oil.
* At its peak the cleanup effort included 10,000 workers, about 1,000 boats and roughly 100 airplanes and helicopters. Exxon says it spent about $2.1 billion.
* No one knows exactly how many animals died but the best estimates are: 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs.

Exxon Valdez oil spill

Exxon Valdez oil spill

In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages. The punitive damages amount was equal to a single year's profit by Exxon at that time.

Exxon appealed the ruling, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the original judge, Russel Holland, to reduce the punitive damages. On December 6, 2002, the judge announced that he had reduced the damages to $4 billion, which he concluded was justified by the facts of the case and was not grossly excessive. Exxon appealed again and the case returned to court to be considered in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, which caused Judge Holland to increase the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, plus interest.

After more appeals, and oral arguments heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 27, 2006, the damages award was cut to $2.5 billion on December 22, 2006. The court cited recent Supreme Court rulings relative to limits on punitive damages.

Exxon appealed again. On May 23, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied ExxonMobil's request for a third hearing and let stand its ruling that Exxon owes $2.5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.[15] On February 27, 2008, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 90 minutes. Justice Samuel Alito, who at the time, owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Exxon stock, recused himself from the case.[16] In a decision issued June 25, 2008, Justice David Souter issued the judgment of the court, vacating the $2.5 billion award and remanding the case back to a lower court, finding that the damages were excessive with respect to maritime common law. Exxon's actions were deemed "worse than negligent but less than malicious."[17] The judgment limits punitive damages to the compensatory damages, which for this case were calculated as $507.5 million.[18] Some lawmakers, such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, have decried the ruling as "another in a line of cases where this Supreme Court has misconstrued congressional intent to benefit large corporations."