Cross posted by permission from Legal Planet.
Rick earlier posted about the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This week, the Ninth Circuit may finally have brought the litigation that followed that spill to a close. You may recall that last year the U.S. Supreme Court heard Exxon’s challenge to the punitive damages award against it, which had been set by the Ninth Circuit (after two remands to the trial court) at $2.5 billion. An equally divided Court upheld the Ninth Circuit’s view that punitive damages could be awarded in a maritime case, but ruled by 5-3 that, in the circumstances of this case, punitive damages should not be awarded in an amount exceeding a 1:1 ratio with the compensatory damages.
On remand to the Ninth Circuit, the parties agreed to a punitive damages award of $507.5 million, precisely equalling the amount of the compensatory damages award. That didn’t entirely resolve the dispute, however. Exxon contended that interest on the punitive damages judgment should run only from 2008, when the judgment on the agreed amount of punitive damages was finally entered after the Supreme Court’s decision, while the plaintiffs thought it should run from 1996, when the original judgment awarding punitive damages was entered. Exxon also contended that it was entitled to recover $70 million in costs for pursuing its appeal of the punitive damages award because, although it eventually agreed it was liable for some punitive damages, the circuitous appeal reduced the initial award by 90% (from $5 billion to roughly $500 million).
In this latest decision, the Ninth Circuit agreed with plaintiffs on both counts. The court agreed unanimously that interest should run from the initial judgment date. Judge Kleinfeld dissented on the question of whether Exxon should be able to recover the costs of its appeal.
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Holly Doremus | June 19, 2009
Cross posted by permission from Legal Planet. Rick earlier posted about the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This week, the Ninth Circuit may finally have brought the litigation that followed that spill to a close. You may recall that last year the U.S. Supreme Court heard Exxon’s challenge to the punitive damages […]
Ben Somberg | June 19, 2009
Andrew Freedman of washingtonpost.com’s Capital Weather Gang has a nifty catch: the Heartland Institute, the people cluttering up my newspaper this week with climate-change-denying ads, have officially changed tack on their lobbying policy. Back in March, the group told Freedman: “Our purpose is to bring scientists, economists, and policy experts together to address issues overlooked […]
Ben Somberg | June 18, 2009
Today CPR releases Reauthorizing the Chesapeake Bay Program: Exchanging Promises for Results (press release, full report). For years, the jurisdictions within the Chesapeake Bay watershed (the states and Washington D.C.) have essentially not faced consequences for failing to meet pollution-reduction targets. It’s not surprising that the Chesapeake Bay has languished. What the new CPR report […]
Alice Kaswan | June 17, 2009
The Waxman-Markey bill, in its current form, continues the nation’s wise respect for the complementary roles of the federal government and the states. By establishing a national cap and a national trading program, the bill would draw all states into the essential task of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But, like the federal environmental laws […]
Daniel Farber | June 16, 2009
The Congressional Budget Office recently issued its report on the Waxman-Markey bill. The Washington Times soon trumpeted: “CBO puts hefty price tag on emissions plan: Obama’s cap-and-trade system seen costing $846 billion.” This is quite misleading. Actually, the CBO report tells us virtually nothing about the economic costs of the bill or how much consumers […]
Yee Huang | June 15, 2009
It’s a frackin’ mess out there in the world of natural gas extraction – exploding houses and water wells, dying cattle, and curious rashes. The Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the House Natural Resources Committee recently held a hearing to explore the risks of hydraulic fracturing, or fracing (sometimes spelled, “fracking”), which is […]
Rena Steinzor | June 12, 2009
This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a terrific piece by Matt Bai on the Obama White House and how it is “taking” Capitol Hill, one battle at a time. After extolling the team of congressional insiders Obama has assembled, and emphasizing the importance of their attentiveness to key players on the issue du […]
Holly Doremus | June 12, 2009
This week, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on the problem of waste pharmaceuticals ending up in the nation’s waterways. The issue sounds trivial – does Congress really need to spend its time worrying about people with a few left-over prescription pills flushing them down the toilet? The answer […]
Holly Doremus | June 11, 2009
Over the past few months, the Obama Administration has sent mixed signals on mountaintop mining, the practice of blowing the tops off mountains containing coal and piling the left-over rubble in valleys and streambeds. Early on, things seemed to be going well for the environment. First, EPA objected to the issuance of two specific permits […]