Exxon Valdez Lawyer: Louisianans, 'To Use A Legal Term,' Are 'Just F--ked'

[kpete]

Source: Huffington Post

Long after oil stops spilling from the Gulf and the ecological catastrophe caused by the spill begins to be cleaned up, the process of determining the extent to which BP owes the afflicted will be litigated in the courts.

And while the case against the oil company seems fairly clear-cut (BP admits, after all, to being responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history), a lawyer with perhaps the most relevant experience on the matter at hand is painting a depressing picture about the litigation ahead.

"If you were affected in Louisiana," said Brian O'Neill, an attorney with the firm Faegre & Benson, "to use a legal term, you are just f--ked."

More than any attorney in the country, O'Neill personally understands the implications of that imprecise legal term. For more than two decades, he represented fishermen in civil cases related to the now second-most-damaging spill in U.S. history: the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. And from it, he learned valuable lessons about how to sue an oil giant for the damages it has caused -- above all, to push for the best and plan for the worst.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/08/exxon-valdez-lawyer-louis_n_604638.html

[tabatha]

1. I wonder whether BP means this?

"Update: BP says it will donate proceeds from oil collected from blown-out well to wildlife rehabilitation - Reuters"

http://twitter.com/BREAKINGNEWS

[Nite Owl]

4. Donate?

Don't they have to pay for it anyway, they broke it they fix it.

[tabatha]

7. Yep, it is all PR.

[roguevalley]

8. they don't mean a damned word. they are just pr-ing and people

better get it straight. they bought 650K of boom materials from my sis's business during exxon and didn't use it but they showed the receipts to everyone and then took the deduction. these people are satanic. don't ever forget that.

[CanonRay]

28. Another tax write off

the fuckers :mad:

[blindpig]

2. Expropriate now

[rfranklin]

9. If anyone means business, that would be the thing to do...

Take every asset that you could get your hands on. (and we have the power to take virtually everything.) And also incarcerate the top execs. Fuck the lawyers. If they get out of line, jail them too.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Fine

that way you actually get less in the long term. If that's what you want then better get your letter off to Obama tonight.

[tnlefty]

15. Well, may we have the Queen's shares...

and also the Crowned Jewels to pay for this?

[B Whale]

16. erm...this is a private company...

[tnlefty]

37. No shit Sherlock...

however I did read something the other day about the royal family owning a lot of BP stock.

Sometimes a joke is just a joke for pity's sake.

[B Whale]

39. sorry, just thought you were equating BP with British people

or the British state that's all.

An American company once fucked up an oil rig in the north sea killing 167 oil workers and completely destroying marine life on the east coast. The oil rig was called 'Piper alpha'.

Its just when that happened we didn;t equate any of that with 'americans' per se, nor demand anything from america, just the company, and we saw them as the comany, not an 'american' company.

i follow american news a lot (for personal reasons i won't go into) and the vitriol against brit this brit that, is fairly bizarre and saddening. An oil companies fucks the gulf of mexico, so everyone gets all nationalistic about it and begins to blame a nation, rather than a company or capitalism, or the oil industry.


Its just quite saddening, how the right wing can deflect so easily from the core of the problem (capitalism, big business, oil) where they don;t want questions asked to blaming obama and also to nationalistic sabre rattling...

[anigbrowl]

3. I am sick of this '$75 million cap' meme. It is false and misleading.

It only applies to genuine accidents. Where gross negligence or wilful misconduct are involved - and there seems to be copious evidence that that was the case here - the cap simply does not apply and the responsible party's liability is unlimited.

[Capitalocracy]

22. I don't know about that. Did they break any regulations?

Or did they just do what they told the government to tell them to do?

I've heard that's going to be their argument, and it sounds like it might go pretty far.

BP STANDS FOR BALLOT POISON

Pledge not to vote for any candidates receiving campaign donations from BP in 2010.

Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/bp2010/petition.html



Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113423272036102

Twitter: @bpballotpoison

[primavera]

23. What regulations?

Oh, you mean like, if we lived in a country that wasn't owned by the oil and gas industry? Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

[mikelgb]

5. for the hyphen challenged here is a translation: YOU'RE JUST FUCKED!

[Gman]

6. That is a very arcane legal term rooted in common law

and very applicable to today's legal environment after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, a Republican Congress from 1994 on through the Bush years up to 2006. And, including Cheney's energy task force which we still haven't seen the records of.

It will take 20 years of legislation to fix this. I'm getting to the point where I won't live to see it.

[TroglodyteScholar]

11. How do you get 12 years of Reagan/Bush?

We had 8 years of Reagan/Bush and 12 years of Bush. 20 total. Don't understate their contribution!

[B Whale]

12. Anyone feel sorry for the Brits pension's that are tied up in BP?

who are gonna be pretty fucked too when BP starts heading southwards in value!

[Catherina]

13. No. n/t

[B Whale]

17. There's a lot of old people in retirement and coming into retirement now

through their companies or the state who had their shares put into BP. Surprised you don;t feel sorry for them either considering a major company is fucking people in the gulf of mexico and also those whose pensions are tied up....

no sympathy? very strange...why is that?

[Catherina]

21. I fight for the little man who doesn't even know what a pension is

thanks to the greed of those who support capitalism and its casino.

You want me to feel sorry for those who gambled and lost while others had no bread?

I find it very strange that you're asking for sympathy for them. They're still much better off than the poor who are exploited for those stock profits. The profit didn't just fall from heaven.

Kill capitalism.

[B Whale]

25. The little man? i'm not sure you're aware of the

situation of pensions in the UK, quite obviously. Companies and the governemtn (with the state pension we have) invested the pensions in BP, unbeknown to those people. People don;t choose where their pensions are invested invariably.

you fight for the little guy?...but not poor people coming to retirement who will now have no income as they age. who the fuck is the little man then?

jesus, you are a classic moral vacuum, only caring about your own faux righteousness, not actual people!

[Catherina]

30. The same people who fucked us all over by accepting stock-based pensions

You're high.

Get this Sherlock, I don't care if your comfy little pensioners in the UK have to bring their lifestyle down a notch. I don't care. Take care of them with your taxes instead of pouring your money into war and manufacturing terror.

[Titanothere]

44. and where does that tax money come from Sherlock? That's right, companies like BP

You reveal yourself and your lack of empathy for your fellow man. What a hypocrital rant.

[Catherina]

36. Please quit with the BP propaganda

Those people allowed their pensions to be invested in the stock market. People have a choice to invest in the market or not. I withdrew my pension money from the market years ago because I don't agree with the 401k scheme. It's sitting in as close to a cash account as I can get and still being matched by my employer.

Quit with the BP propaganda. You leave me cold as our birds and marine life are dying and a rich culture was just destroyed. Lost forever. You leave me stone marble cold.

[B Whale]

38. hmmmm. i'm talking about pensioners not shareholders.

perhaps we got crossed wires.

these are invariably quite poor people, who have had money taken from their salary by government, or different companies and invested (where? they don;t know). turns out a hell of a lot is in BP. This money (the state pension amounts to about £7000 a year), is so that old people can eat and put the fire on in winter, is at risk. comfy pensioners is a strange description.

perhaps we have got crossed wires but i thought, from your posts, you would be sympathetic to ANY victim of capitalist folly!!, particularly poor old people! ..apparently not!

(you leave me stone marble cold'...is quite an extreme thing to say when i'm posing a question about other people who are suffering for debate, while not making any reference to how i feel about marine life etc).

[Titanothere]

45. I think you started out that cold.

[Titanothere]

43. maybe you should teach that "little man" to get an education and a decent job

then he can build wealth like everyone else. What a bizzare response. Kill capitalism? It pays all your bills. How's that European socialist fantasy world working out? Not so well, it turns out you actually have to work for a living, imagine that.

[Nihil]

27. How about the elderly Americans in the same fix?

(Bearing in mind that BP is 39% owned by US companies and has had a good
reputation over the years as a safe investment for pension schemes ...)

Just trying to work out if you are hating because of nationality or
because of age ...

:hi:

[Celebration]

32. nobody hates the retiree shareholders of BP

We do hate the corporate management whom the shareholders elected. It is a matter of where the financial responsibility lies. Clearly it should not be condo owners or fishermen in the Gulf. Clearly it should be the owners of the company who are responsible. Do I hate the elderly shareholders of BP in either the UK or the USA? No. Do I feel sorry for them? Not really. Anyone who takes an ownership of a company through purchasing shares knows that money is at risk. It's called capitalism. They aren't risking their other assets. They are only risking the amount they invested in the company.

[Nihil]

33. Maybe there is just a disconnect over the meaning of "pension" here?

> Do I hate the elderly shareholders of BP in either the UK or the USA? No.
> Do I feel sorry for them? Not really. Anyone who takes an ownership of a
> company through purchasing shares knows that money is at risk.

As someone pointed out a few posts above this, pension companies and the
UK government (as provider of the state pension) invested those pension
contributions in BP (amongst others) as it has heretofore been a safe & good
investment.

Not only is this on the whole done without any choice from the soon-to-be
pensioner, it is often done through several layers so it is practically
impossible to find out exactly *where* the funds are currently located.
(That's without the further difficulty when the fund managers shuffle the money
from place A to place B between annual statements.)

In addition, it means that their money is invested in BP shares (in this case)
but they do NOT have any say whatsoever on "the corporate management whom the
shareholders elected" and so have no more "financial responsibility" than the
"condo owners or fishermen". They are not shareholders themselves (like the
execs or the Wall Street bods) but their *pensions* are dependent on the
behaviour of the shares.

I gather (from a quick look around) that pensions in the US are quite different
in that you seem to have to manage your own portfolios or whatever investments
you choose rather than simply paying a cut of your salary into a pension scheme.
In that respect, someone who chooses to store part of their "pension" (is that
the "401K" thing that is sometimes mentioned?) by buying a specific number of
shares themselves would be at least one step closer to the "shareholder person"
whom you (and others) seek to punish.

Is that why we appear to be a cross-purposes on this subject or am I completely
off-track here?

:shrug:

[Celebration]

34. it's too bad

but it doesn't change the facts.

Like it or not, the company is responsible for the harm it causes. In this case that is not me, as a taxpayer, and certainly not the victims of the harmful acts.

Where do you think the financial responsibility lies? Someone has to pay. It should be the party at fault. I don't want corporate welfare for the likes of BP.

[Catherina]

35. Hating because of the gamble

It's not the nationality and certainly not the age though I do have a slight problem with being asked, as an American taxpayer, to worry about how this could affect European retirement plans when we have millions of people here who don't see a nickle of retirement and are about to get screwed even more.

The stock market is the rich man's casino that's subsidized by workers. That's what I have a problem with. If the rich, the greedy and the stupid (the stupid would be us who didn't fight the mad 401K scheme) are ok with linking their retirement money to a casino, I have no time for the tears.

Dead dolphins are washing up full of oil. Birds are coated with inches of sludge and cooked to death until their their poor tired bodies let go and they sink beneath the surface unseen and uncounted.

These pleas to think about the poor lambs who are living off BP stock leave me very cold. If I had my way, all those stockholders would be sued because those shareholders are the legal owners of the BP corporation. They voted those criminals in and cashed their profits. Now the profits won't be as good and we're supposed to feel sorry for them?

There's nothing to stop those pensioners from removing their moneyor putting it into different stocks or a money market. I hope that better explains where I'm coming from. :hi:

[B Whale]

40. a few things.

"they voted those criminals in". No....no they didn;t. most pensioners have their money in pension plans. they don't know where it is!!!. these are poor people who have scrimped and saved their entire life so they can eat in old age...maybe you should educate yourself.

"poor lambs who are living off BP stock" ...no i'll think i'll stop there actually. this either shows your complete ignorance of what we are debating or complete callousness. either way i can't see the point in continuing,

(for the record, while i'd like to see neither, i give more of a shit about a human being freezing to death in winter cos they can;t put their heating on than a freakin dolphin)

[Nihil]

46. Thanks for your reply.

> There's nothing to stop those pensioners from removing their moneyor putting
> it into different stocks or a money market. I hope that better explains where
> I'm coming from.

There is a profound disconnect between the US view of pensioners and the
reality of UK pensioners/near-to-pensioners with regard to power over their
money. A few people have tried to explain that in this thread (and others)
so I'll not waste your time with another attempt.

At least I can see now that you're not one of the blind morons who equates
the "B" in "BP" to the British people. Thanks for that.

:hi:

[Celebration]

14. Nope

It is either capitalism pure and simple or it isn't. They took the risk. Not the taxpayers.

[B Whale]

18. Just wondering whether you felt sorry for them

strange that you don't...same argument could be made about about sticking an oil well in the gulf of mexico and wanted lots of cheap petrol.

you took the risk!

[Celebration]

20. They are diversified

You know? If not, let them sue their investment advisors.

Do you feel sorry for the shrimpers?

I want a transfer from the owners of BP to the shrimpers, to the condo owners. Do you feel sorry for people who have their retirement in shrimp boats or condos on the Gulf Coast? Sheesh!

[B Whale]

26. Of course i do! ...just asking a question, cos its strange

how suffering always gets split up into deserving and undeserving causes in people's mind. do you expect me to say i don;t give a shit about the shrimpers? of course i do, i also feel sorry heading to retirement now with the potential of no money...

[Celebration]

31. yes it is too bad

When anyone puts money into equity ownership of a company, that money is at risk. It's unfortunate that collectively, these owners made such poor choice of management that they are risk takers, putting not only the entire Gulf region into turmoil, but their own shareholders.

However, it is no fault of the people in the Gulf region. It IS the fault of the company. The owners of the company face the consequences, not those who have no fault.

It's common law, like, forever.

[B Whale]

41. i'm noy asking tax payers in the gulf to pay for

anyones pensions. of course its the company's fault. i was simply trying to bring a different perspective to it, that's all. about a different human suffering side to this capitalist monstrosity and you went mental....chill out!. i refer to you to my original post as to my intentions

[Titanothere]

42. Very few around here feel bad about all the people's retirements that are toasted

because they're just so compassionate.

It's pretty sad to see people's true natures revealing themselves. So thousands might be out of a job, states might loose mass amounts of revenue and pensions might loose billions in value? Who cares, I hate oil. How very nice.

[PinkFloyd]

19. The oil spill represents the reality of what our nation has become.

Every president since the 1980's has pushed a de-regulated, pro-corporate, anti-middle class agenda and this is what you get--big unemployment numbers and corporations who have limited to no liability for anything, no matter how outrageous. Plus, it seems one party doesn't have the balls to do what it takes to fix it and the other is hellbent on making it worse. I got news for Mr. O'Neill, Louisiana isn't the only one F*'d, the whole country is.

[harun]

24. I totally agree with your post. People keep electing what amounts to Corporate Representatives.

They represent the interests of the biggest Corporations.

BP will not have to pay out much for this. Heck they haven't even cut their dividend to shareholders.

[Mimosa]

29. ^ Good analysis above ^ n/t