It was March 23, 1989 when the allegedly drunk Captain Hazelwood rammed the supertanker Exxon Valdez into a reef dumping over 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound.

The spill devastated this once beautiful Alaskan region by killing thousands of birds and other wildlife and turning the area into a barren God-forsaken place.

This senseless tragedy caused untold amounts of financial, mental and physical hardships to the land, wildlife and people of this once vibrant fishing community. Rightfully so a lawsuit was filed against Exxon and the jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages. Now with the fat cat lawyers on the oil giants payroll this was cut down to $2.5 billion by the federal courts.

To date Exxon has not paid anything on this $2.5 billion court order.

Now today after 19 years it comes before the Supreme Court to see if Exxon can be slick and have the high court overturn this award. My money says that the corporate owned Supreme Court will follow suit and bail out Exxon and screw over the 32,000 plus citizens of Alaska. Keep in mind new boy on the block Justice Samuel Alito has already recused himself since he obviously has $100’s of thousands in Exxon stock.

Exxon is crying the blues saying that the company has suffered enough. Further comments were made by Exxon puppet Tony Cudmore,

“This case has never been about compensating people for actual damages.

“Rather it is about whether further punishment is warranted in a case where the company voluntarily compensated most plaintiffs within a year of the spill, and has spent over $3.5 billion, including compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines. We do not believe any punitive damages are warranted in this case.”

Boo hoo! Your company screwed up and it’s time to pay the piper Tony! So stop flapping your gums about suffering and maritime law and cut a damn check. After all the citizens are still being haunted by the Valdez spill today.

Taking into consideration that Exxon posted record profits of $40.6 BILLION DOLLARS for 2007, this award seems like nothing more than pocket change.

Step up Exxon and do the right thing! And Supreme Court remember you are not the guardians of corporations have some balls and shut Exxon up for good!

After today we’ll see if…

“There really is no business like oil business…”

Maybe we should look at better alternatives!

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Tags: exxon lawsuit, exxon oil spill, exxon supreme court, exxon valdez, exxon valdez spill, prince william sound

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Pissed Off With Corporations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.