BP Oil Disaster: Major compensation payouts from other global corporations
After Barack Obama forced BP to set aside $20 billion to pay for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, look at other landmark payouts from corporations around the world.
Exxon Valdez oil spill
Prior to current leak off the coast of America the Exxon Valdez oil spill was the worst oil slick when it occurred off Alaska in March 1989.
An oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, hit Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated minimum 250,000 barrels of crude oil.
An Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5billion for punitive damages – equal to one year’s profit for the oil company at the time.
Exxon appealed an on December 6, 2002, the judge announced that he had reduced the damages to $4 billion. Exxon appealed again and Judge Holland increased the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, plus interest.
After more appeals, and oral arguments heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 27, 2006, the damages award was cut to $2.5 billion on December 22, 2006.
Bhopal gas leak
Ranked as one of the world’s worst ever industrial catastrophes the Bhopal disaster or Bhopal Gas Tragedy occurred on the night of December 3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.
The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Other government agencies estimate 15,000 deaths. Others estimate that 8,000 died within the first weeks and that another 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.
In June 2010, seven ex-employees, including the former chairman of UCIL, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by law.
In 1999, a settlement was reached under which UCC agreed to pay US$470 million (the insurance sum, plus interest) in a full and final settlement of its civil and criminal liability.
When UCC wanted to sell its shares in UCIL, it was directed by the Supreme Court to finance a 500-bed hospital for the medical care of the survivors. Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC) was inaugurated in 1998. It was obliged to give free care for survivors for eight years.
PG&E vs Hinkley, California
Pacific Gas and Electric Company settled a $333 million payout to residents of Hinkley in California. At the center of the case was a facility called the Hinkley Compressor Station, part of a natural gas pipeline connecting to the San Francisco Bay Area and constructed in 1952. Between 1952 and 1966, PG&E used hexavalent chromium to fight corrosion in the cooling tower. The wastewater dissolved the hexavalent chromium from the cooling towers and was discharged to unlined ponds at the site. Some of the wastewater percolated into the groundwater, affecting an area near the plant approximately two miles long and nearly a mile wide.
The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in US history.
Another lawsuit, which lists 1,200 plaintiffs, alleges contamination near PG&E’s Kettleman Hills Compressor Station in King’s County, California, along the same pipeline as the Hinkley site. The Kettleman suit settled for $335 million in 2006.
British Coal
The UK’s largest ever industrial injury compensation payout was settled by the government in March 1999.
Around £1.5 billion damages was set aside for 65,000 former miners suffering from debilitating lung diseases.
The Department of Trade and Industry took over responsibility for the liabilities after British Coal was privatised.
Later however a £6.9billion miners’ compensation scheme was set up by the Government because of British Coal’s lack of safety standards.
This led to hundreds of thousands of claims from former miners and their families.
Philip Morris
In 2001 the tobacco giant Philip Morris was ordered to pay more than £2 billion in compensation to a man whose nicotine addiction left him with incurable cancer.
The Los Angeles jury decided Philip Morris did not properly warn Richard Boeken of the risks of smoking.
It ordered Philip Morris to pay him £2 billion in punitive damages and £3.5m in general damages after finding the company guilty of six counts of fraud, negligence and making a defective product.
The award is the largest individual punitive damage award ever to a cigarette smoker.
The largest judgement against the tobacco industry was $145 billion awarded last year to thousands of Florida smokers in a class action lawsuit.
source: telegraph.co.uk
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Finance | Cigarettes Store | admin | June 18, 2010
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While we’re talking about topics related to BP Oil Disaster: Major compensation payouts from other global corporations | Smokers Info, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying.. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession. The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals.
Those desperate miners are so fortunate to be alive. My thoughts go out to them and their loved ones. I do hope they make it out alive and don’t go crazy while locked so deep underground.I can only imagine what they are going through.
It can be all the income everybody saves from free of charge medical treatment. People have yet to figure out free of charge doesn’t exist but they love it. If all the money needed for this could be gotten from all the savings folks and businesses got from it then it would not be a problem however the fact is it’ll charge far more then it saves. Some companies offer higher wages in lieu of benefits so no savings on the provider and also other companies offer a “rebate” to employees who do not need or want medical benefits and the rest offer medical plans that is figured in on the lower compensation. The first thing that will happen is the companies including benefits as part in the package could have to complete is increase pay since that is no longer part within the package or they will lose employees towards companies now finding it from the government strategy so the savings is reduced. In the event you are planning to charge the companies for it then the companies paying the higher wages without benefits either lower wages or increase expense. Individuals will shell out either way just a matter of directly through income taxes or fees or indirectly by paying increased prices for products due to the fact that the companies are paying fees or higher taxes. President Obama keeps promising points without any cost to men and women but that is not real world. If you get price savings through “more efficiency” in the government software and that goes to paying for that procedure rather then lower expense then people save nothing but lowering the price will mean the dollars has to appear from some where whether fees, taxes or decrease in services. Americans spend a massive amount on medical but part of that would be unnecessary or not allowed as it is usually cosmetic or not required; persons would still want those issues so would pay for them any way. The thing about finding this and saving all this bucks or costing nothing is not logical once you imagine about it but all a lot of are seeing is something for nothing.
I note that British Petroleum (BP) are joining forces with Russia’s Rosnet for deep drilling in the South Kara Sea. Heh-heh… what’s the Russian for Louisiana? Bet we soon find out!