After BP's mess, do conservatives still want 'tort reform'?

1:49 pm June 3, 2010, by ctucker

Conservatives are big fans of so-called tort reform — generally speaking, a limit on awards for damages. The popularity of tort reform grows out of the idea that juries and trial lawyers come together to conspire against hardworking business executives and tireless doctors, making them pay out big sums of money for poor outcomes that were not their fault But an interesting outline of the consequences of the Exxon Valdez spill tells a different story.

Big Oil won out, with the help of its lawyers. From Portfolio:

The disaster seemed to be a clear case of negligence: the ship's captain, Joseph Hazelwood, was legally intoxicated at the time, and had surrendered the wheel to overworked subordinates as it navigated the difficult, shoal-dotted waters of the sound.

But in a tale rivaling the protracted legal wrangling in Bleak House, litigation over the spill continues to drag on, two decades later, and the fishermen, cannery workers, and others whose lives were wrecked have yet to find out how much they may receive in compensation.(emphasis added)

Three numbers put the spill and its attendant lawsuits into perspective: 1.6 billion, 20, and 6,000.

The first number—1.6 billion—represents the approximate dollar payout that Exxon Mobil Corp. will make to plaintiffs. Maybe. One third of that amount would come from interest that tolled with the 1994 verdict—but the company is continuing to fight that matter.

The second figure—20—is the percentage of any payout that will be vacuumed up by the more than 80 law firms that have represented the plaintiffs.

The final number—6,000—is the most sobering, marking as it does an estimate of how many of the original litigants have died since the first suits were filed. Some 32,000 plaintiffs remain.

Liability questions focused on the captain, who had previously been disciplined for drinking on the job. A jury found Exxon responsible in 1994, awarding $287 million in compensatory damages (a number that rises to $507 million when other settlements are added in) and $5 billion in punitive damages.

Exxon appealed, arguing, among other things, that the captain's malfeasance could not be imputed to the company and that it had already been punished enough by fines and cleanup costs.

Oddly, some Republicans in Congress are still working hard to protect BP from having to pay for its mess. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) From Swampland:

But it's Vitter's early support of a liability cap – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – that's landing the son of a Chevron petroleum engineer in trouble. Local and national Democrats have been pounding Vitter for seeking to limit the amount of legal damages BP would be responsible for to the last four quarters of profit. "Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not going to protect BP – and given their track record, we are certainly not going to rely on BP's word as the only thing ensuring that taxpayers are not left on the hook to pay for the disaster they caused," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.

It will be interesting to see what conservative voters in Louisiana think of that.