Exxon

[Freak Out]

But punitive damages are often awarded when compensatory damages have been deemed inadequate...AS A NUMBER OF JURIES HAVE DONE SO FAR IN THIS CASE Leaper.

A LOT of juries have their damages reduced on appeal because for the most part juries don't actually have a clue what they're doing and they tend to think the same way you do: That Exxon is a huge company with lots of cash, so hitting them up for a couple billion won't even effect them.

Exxon has already paid out 3.5 BILLION dollars for the actions of one or two negligent employees. At some point you have to stop looking at corporations as cash cows there for the slaughter in our judicial system.

So the judicial system should be for the exclusive use of who then?
Surely not those dang juries and there wacky modern math...or lack thereof.

I want revenge! More than anything I wanted the DOJ to go as high as they could up the ladder and bring someone down. But old Joe made that call to the coast guard and that was all she wrote. laws have of course changed since then and thats exactly what would happen today if you had that kind of corporate negligence...but you would be hard pressed to find a company that allowed a drunk to drive its vehicles around any longer. The sad thing about all of this is it really never had to happen. The pipeline should NEVER have been built to Valdez in the first place and should have gone through Canada instead. The oil would never have to be loaded in a tanker and shipped over any water at all. But as in most of these things greed won out over everything else. Every American wanted that oil and fast as they could get it. The State of Alaska and the Feds didn't want to share the royalties with the Canadians and the US construction companies wanted all that work for themselves not some Canadian company hooking into the northwest network.