The right wing judges who pollute our courts have drastically reduced punitive damages, which is the issue here, to the point where they're completely useless.

The purpose of punitive damages is to punish a guilty defendant, like Exxon, in order to provide a strong incentive to not repeat the behavior that resulted in a guilty verdict.  If punitive damages were based on what a defendant could afford or not afford, and on the behavior at issue, it would provide that incentive.  However, our fascist Supreme Court has limited punitive damages to an amount based on compensatory damages, which are based on the actual harm caused.  This lets defendants like Exxon off the hook, because they can obviously afford to pay a lot of money without that payment affecting their behaviors.  Even $5 billion is not a sufficient amount to discourage Exxon.  Add to that the ludicrous amount of time that has passed since the oil spill -- almost 20 years of Exxon earning interest or making investment profits on the money -- and any incentive to change Exxon's behavior that punitive damages would provide has been totally lost.

This is just another example of the broken legal system in the U.S. that highly favors those with money and power to the detriment of everything and everyone else.

I love the way the clean-up costs and the fines, which the government could easily soak itself, get paid, while the money that should go to real people whose lives were #$%!!ed fucked up by the spill, gets stuck in the bank and appealed and appealed and appealed. I've read that many of the people who were entitled to compensation are dead now.

If either Hillary or Obama would promise to press every possible charge against ExxonMobile, and preferably seek the original damages plus interest for Valdez victims, they'd have my unwavering support.

With the new corpoRATist judges duuhbya has appointed.  Did you know that Alito ruled that the federal government has no right to regulate machine guns in an earlier judge ship?

Yep, if Alito had his way corporate citizens would be free to sell everyone ak-47s.  Just like in Iraq.  Every family is entitled to one ak.   That's a great profit picture for Putin's war profiteering.

The new judges, plus Scalia and the pubic hair on the coke can dude, ought to be able to let the exxonmob off the hook.

They just ruled against even hearing an ACLU suit over the bushco data mining.  No standing.  The evidence that would prove there is a person who was actually spyed on  and thus have standing to sue, is secret.  can't be released until a law suit is brought.  Catch 22.  Hehey.  Those wacky justices!

That darned constitution was such a pain in the ass, it's good to see it finally being rendered null and void.

Pathos baby!, how the *%$$ hell do you intend that should be pronounced, and remain civil?

Not that I was at all stirred to blush, of course, though I did flutter my fan a bit more agitatedly.

Anyway, excellent point.  And excellent as well is Amazing's regular denunciation of "corpoRATism."

Not that I have anything against rats, the original ones.  My understanding is they make very sweet pets.

Really, though, we Americans make lots of hoopla over the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation -- rightly so! -- , but we foolishly then pay no attention to equally fundamental texts, much more cruel however, the judicial decision to treat the corporation as an individual citizen, and the judicial tradition of decisions favoring business interests and mistrusting claims of individual citizens.

I've said it once; I'll say it again. I really need to stop posting when I'm working on marathon insomnia sessions.

I'm going to go sleep now, and hope nothing wakes me up before the next alpaca-feeding time.

What is to add.The rich get richer and use those riches to beat how the system is supposed to work.It is indeed a crime that it has taken 20yrs.and still Exxon does not pay up on a world class crime,and yes many of the people who are owed reparations have died.Alas Babylon.

Exxon paid compensatory damages long ago.  Those are for the harms that were caused by the oil spill, such as lost wages/income.  What's at issue now are punitive damages (see my first post).  It's not that people didn't get paid for their losses, they just didn't get the punitive damages to which a jury said they're entitled.  And of course, no amount of money will make up for killing animals or polluting the land and water with oil, not to mention that some people's livelihoods are permanently or indefinitely ruined, for which I'm sure they haven't been adequately compensated.