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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
Regarding the $20 billion
Saturday, June 19, 2010 6:50 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:Attorney Brian O'Neill has a lifetime of experience when it comes to the legal battles that ensue following major oil catastrophes. After the Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed in Prince William Sound in 1989, O'Neill headed straight to Alaska. The Minnesota-based attorney had an interest in environmental issues and wanted to help because, as he put it, "there were an awful lot of hurt people." He soon represented 2,600 fishermen and others affected by the spill. What he thought would be a two- or three-year "adventure" is still the biggest thing on his plate, one-third of his life later. O'Neill successfully argued the 1994 trial after which a jury ordered Exxon to pay $5.3 billion in punitive damages to O'Neill's clients and others affected by the spill. Exxon appealed almost two dozen times and O'Neill was there through it all. In 2008, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 5-3 majority finally set punitive damages at $500 million. (Regarding the Gulf oil spill he said)Quote:The noise and the feeling that you get now is the same as the noise and the feeling that you got in the early days of the Valdez spill, with people saying the same thing and people reacting the same way. It's going to be interesting when the limelight is no longer on the Gulf as to how BP is going to act and how the federal and state governments are going to act. Because once this is no longer on the front page of the newspaper, everybody's reaction is going to be 'We need oil.' Oil runs the universe, and you can see governments settling with BP relatively cheaply and you can see BP at some point in time changing its attitude from 'We'll pay you' to 'We'll pay you if the court tells us to pay you.' I thought that -- like a lot of people think now with regard to BP -- that Exxon would want to settle the case relatively early and move on and I was surprised a number of times with the fact that this was World War III to them, and they dealt with it that way . They spent over $400 million on lawyers, essentially defending [against] our claims. They took every appeal they could take and they took every delay they could take and filed every motion they could take. Don't kid yourself: the oil companies have the best lawyers money can buy. if a company is rich enough and powerful enough to hire hundreds of lawyers they can essentially bring the legal system to a halt. They can. Most of these fishermen no longer believe that the court system of the United States provides equal justice. They've come to a conclusion that is the same as the conclusion that I've come to, and that is that our governmental institutions will always bail out big oil, and they did here. I regret that I haven't done a lot of other professional things for the last 21 years, I do. It was never my plan to be a trial lawyer until I was 63 years old. I was going to go off and do something else, teach law school probably. But I didn't get the chance to do that so that's my biggest regret. Second regret is it's hard on you emotionally, so then it's hard on your family to always be worrying about the same thing all of the time. But we got through it ... I am proud of the work I've done. I am not proud of the fact that I didn't make my clients whole. I had expected in 1989 that in the end of the day, everybody would be fully compensated for their losses, and they weren't. And that's in part my fault. So while I'm proud I lasted 21 years, the result was not what my clients deserved.
Quote:The noise and the feeling that you get now is the same as the noise and the feeling that you got in the early days of the Valdez spill, with people saying the same thing and people reacting the same way. It's going to be interesting when the limelight is no longer on the Gulf as to how BP is going to act and how the federal and state governments are going to act. Because once this is no longer on the front page of the newspaper, everybody's reaction is going to be 'We need oil.' Oil runs the universe, and you can see governments settling with BP relatively cheaply and you can see BP at some point in time changing its attitude from 'We'll pay you' to 'We'll pay you if the court tells us to pay you.' I thought that -- like a lot of people think now with regard to BP -- that Exxon would want to settle the case relatively early and move on and I was surprised a number of times with the fact that this was World War III to them, and they dealt with it that way . They spent over $400 million on lawyers, essentially defending [against] our claims. They took every appeal they could take and they took every delay they could take and filed every motion they could take. Don't kid yourself: the oil companies have the best lawyers money can buy. if a company is rich enough and powerful enough to hire hundreds of lawyers they can essentially bring the legal system to a halt. They can. Most of these fishermen no longer believe that the court system of the United States provides equal justice. They've come to a conclusion that is the same as the conclusion that I've come to, and that is that our governmental institutions will always bail out big oil, and they did here. I regret that I haven't done a lot of other professional things for the last 21 years, I do. It was never my plan to be a trial lawyer until I was 63 years old. I was going to go off and do something else, teach law school probably. But I didn't get the chance to do that so that's my biggest regret. Second regret is it's hard on you emotionally, so then it's hard on your family to always be worrying about the same thing all of the time. But we got through it ... I am proud of the work I've done. I am not proud of the fact that I didn't make my clients whole. I had expected in 1989 that in the end of the day, everybody would be fully compensated for their losses, and they weren't. And that's in part my fault. So while I'm proud I lasted 21 years, the result was not what my clients deserved.
Saturday, June 19, 2010 5:06 PM
DREAMTROVE
Saturday, June 19, 2010 10:19 PM
SHINYGOODGUY
Sunday, June 20, 2010 1:27 AM
Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:10 AM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Quote:Originally posted by dreamtrove: Anyway, I'd be happy, as I said, if the govt did something. At the moment, it looks like they made a deal. Now if they're really going to spend it on the spill, we should become clean uppers, because you gotta know that it's not going to take a million people, so the rate of pay will be ridiculously high, at least for the companies who get the contracts. Anyway, I hate to be defending this position, because I see people bring not in the least bit skeptical about a highly unusual event, and one that basic psychology and looking at Tonys behavior scream something is desperately wrong here. I think it merits a little skepticism, that's all.
Quote: As an institution, the Pentagon runs on oil. Its jet fighters, bombers, tanks, Humvees, and other vehicles burn 75% of the fuel used by the Department of Defense. For example, B-52 bombers consume 47,000 gallons per mission, and when an F-16 fighter kicks in its afterburners, it burns through $300 worth of fuel a minute. In fact, according to an article in the April 2010 issue of Energy Source, the official newsletter of the Pentagon’s fuel-buying component, the DoD purchases three billion gallons of jet fuel per year. Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense has been consuming vast quantities of fuel. According to 2008 figures, for example, U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan used a staggering 90 million gallons per month. Given the base-building boom that preceded President Obama’s Afghan surge, the 2010 figures may be significantly higher. In 2009, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), the military spent $3.8 billion for 31.3 million barrels -- around 1.3 billion gallons -- of oil consumed at posts, camps, and bases overseas. Moreover, DESC’s bulk-fuels division, which purchases jet fuel and naval diesel fuel among other petroleum products, awarded $2.2 billion in contracts to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. Another $974 million was reportedly spent by the ground-fuels division, which awards contracts for diesel fuel, gasoline, and heating oil for ground operations, just for the war in Afghanistan in 2009. In 2009, according to the Defense Energy Support Center, the military awarded $22.5 billion in energy contracts. More than $16 billion of that went to purchasing bulk fuel. Some 10 top petroleum suppliers got the lion’s share, more than $11.5 billion, among them big names like Shell, Exxon Mobil and Valero. The largest contractor, however, was BP, which received more than $2.2 billion -- almost 12% of all petroleum-contract dollars awarded by the Pentagon for the year.
Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:56 AM
Sunday, June 20, 2010 4:01 AM
Quote:3), they don't care about the long term. BP execs today care about today. If today is going to be bad in order to make tomorrow good, then its better to be out of there yesterday. No one will pay twenty to get two, even two a year, because they start out losing twenty, and the guys who lose the twenty are the current guys, who will be gone in a year or two, and someone else will be getting the two a year.
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