Court to Decide If Punitive Award Too Harsh in Valdez Spill

By Christopher Snowbeck, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Oct. 29–The Supreme Court said this morning it would review the legal dispute over $2.5 billion in punitive damages owed by ExxonMobil Corp. for the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

Minneapolis attorney Brian O’Neill, the lead trial counsel for the Exxon plaintiffs, could not immediately be reached for comment. His law firm, Faegre & Benson, represented about 2,500 of the 14,000 plaintiffs, who included Alaskan fishermen and landowners.

ExxonMobil welcomed the court’s move. The company says the award was unwarranted since Exxon Corp. voluntarily compensated most plaintiffs within a year of the spill. Exxon spent more than $3.5 billion on compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines, the company said today in a prepared statement.

The Supreme Court’s decision comes just over 13 years after a federal jury in Anchorage, Alaska ordered Exxon Corp. to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to people harmed when the ship ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude in the bay, killing wildlife and fouling 1,500 miles of shoreline.

The award subsequently was cut in half by a federal appeals court, the Associated Press reported today. The case likely will be heard by the court this spring, AP reported.

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XOM,