Supreme Court Slashes Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fine

what? you want to charge the oil company more? feel free, just expect your gas price to go up. In principal making companies pay for damages is good, but when you are charging a company that support the life we all live, well, they get to bend the rules.

Maybe if they had paid for it 20 years ago when they were supposed to it would be less of a hit.

Oh yea did you read the part that said they could pay for it in 4 days?

Also, did you read the part about how much money they spend to create companies to deny global warming? Maybe they should use some of that money instead?

Four days is still a pretty big punishement. Exxon could have invested that money into more wind turbines to offset the carbon trading system that could hurt them so dearly. Also, before you say things along the lines of "oil companies are crooks, we should tax them to hell" you should really consider who owns those companies.

I wonder if your employer ever took away 4 days of your wages for sloppy work

"I wonder if your employer ever took away 4 days of your wages for sloppy work "

I didnt crash a ship and dump millions of gallons of oil onto nature because i was too cheap to buy a radar for my ship, and then blame it on a drunk captain as a skape goat.

At what point can companies like Exxon cut costs to you the consumer and destroy the world. Just because it saves you money at the pump doesn't make it good.

• "Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker's radar was left broken and disasbled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate."*
  
  * http://www.gregpalast.com/court-rewards-exxon-for-valdez-oil-spill/

"Exxon could have invested that money into more wind turbines to offset the carbon trading system that could hurt them so dearly."

I guess you are still missing the point about the billions of dollars they are investing in denying global warming. They didn't invest in keeping their ships in a condition so oils spills don't happen. What makes me think they will invest their money wisely now?

"Also, before you say things along the lines of "oil companies are crooks, we should tax them to hell" you should really consider who owns those companies."

Most of the high gas prices today are due to adjusting inflation to keep oil prices down and now we are paying for it.*

*http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

See how i back up my arguments with facts?

If i had said "oil companies are crooks, we should tax them to hell", then you might be able to comment on it.

Instead you are just making up words and putting them in my mouth. So if you want to make kissie faces at me i could direct you where to kiss.

Hmm. I wonder what my employer would do if i dumped a tanker of oil in the pacific ocean. Since Exxon doesn't work for anyone, they sell a product the idea of an employer fining an employee being consistent with the US government fining a poorly managed business i think is incorrect. I would not equate the Valdez to sloppy workmanship, more like quality that risk human life and welfare. If i designed a structure that failed and if injured even 50 people, i could pay a fine, lose my license to practice, go to jail, and get sued by the owner or my contractee. So, if this is the comparison you like, the employer would have fired an employee for much less, leaving him with no finances, and because of the impact to health and welfare, he would have been prosecuted in the courts and sent to jail. So i guess what you are really trying to say is that the US government should have permanently terminated Exxons services within the US, and sent the executives to prison. I would suspect that Exxon would prefer to pay a fine rather than no longer be able to sell any products in the US forever, as one would cost them a few days profit and the other would close them down.

I personally think a better comparison would be your housing contractor, plumber or such. How would you respond if your plumber damaged the foundation of your house or drove a backhoe through your living room. I suspect that you would want him to pay for all the repairs to the damage (more than likely you would want something better than it was before, rather than substantially worse), and probably even terminate his contract (priviledge to work on your project) or expect a break on the contract price for pain and suffering. Does our government terminate large oil corporations priviledge to work in the US? did Exxon give us a break on gasoline to say they are sorry, and then pay the full clean up cost plus that little extra effort we would expect from someone in a smaller business who did far less damage.

Regarding the corrupt nature of oil companies and their ownership. They are predominantly owned and managed by the same people who owned companies like ENRON. So if Exxon loses money , those people are still going to make huge profitsa through illegal trading and such, only the retirement fund investment groups ever get ripped off by those investments.

How very obtuse--I was there and they threw money at everything that moved after the wreck--A lot of what they did, damaged things worse. Who is entitled to this money, me, you, who? Read and puke back up what you will--I was there and you are clown shoes for even thinking that there is a good remedy for what happened and that money, now, will serve any just cause. Hazelwood was the man that ran the ship aground and I don't think you have a clue.--No different than a hundred people I know. He had to have been an educated man to be in that position and in charge of such a large vessel and its cargo--Who are you and what coast guard tonnage licenses do you hold that qualify your opinion? VECO(Valdez Exxon Cleanup Operation)--I didn't read even half of the certifiable crap posted in this thread--so forgive me if you know what VECO stands for, or don't.

The research on otters affected by the spill killed most of the animals studied-- You know anything about it?--I do.

The money paid to the salmon industry--you know what happened there?(Vessel owners submitted a catch histories and VECO paid them, without operational costs, the gross for their best season--The vessel owners fired their regular crews and pocketed the entire settlement. I know a lot of boat owners and deckhands, you know any?).

I am done--you are a fool and this terrible thing happened close to twenty years ago--get over it, unless you come up with some Exxon cash that I can have.

There are so many better things to worry about right now--This is my two cents and I may not respond further--No offense--this is so old.

I am confused by this post, half of you sounds like Exxon handled this badly and half of you sounds like you are on their side.

The only thing I can decipher is that you were there, in some capacity, and that you believe that makes you the only expert on the matter.

I wasn't there, I was probably just getting out of kindergarten. However, it doesn't mean that using reputable resources, which i do consider i have used to gather info (which you have admitted to not have read) means that I should not be able to have an opinion.

I was also not present for a tragedy such as The Bhopal Disaster. However, I can realize that this event was tragic and in some ways could have been prevented if the proper money was invested to maintain their facilities. Much in the same way if the radar and other equipment was replaced on the Valdez the spill could have been prevented.

"Who is entitled to this money, me, you, who? "

I believe that the people entitled to the money were the original winners of the settlement before it was delayed for 20 years in appellate court.

"you are clown shoes for even thinking that there is a good remedy for what happened and that money, now, will serve any just cause. "

I don't know who your referent is, I may be clown shoes here, but to say that the money will not server any just cause now and that the point you are making means that people should be awarded less of a settlement today is completely flawed.

Of course it has less value now then it did 20 years ago, isn't the fact that Exxon held up the case in court for 20 years put the blame on them?

"owners submitted a catch histories and VECO paid them, without operational costs, the gross for their best season--The vessel owners fired their regular crews and pocketed the entire settlement."

Maybe if VECO had paid the natives, ie the regular crews on the boats, instead of only the boat captains this would have not happened.

Just because VECO handled only a small portion of what they were supposed to, and did it horribly (as supported by your own post) doesn't absolve them from the situation.

"I am done--you are a fool and this terrible thing happened close to twenty years ago--get over it, unless you come up with some Exxon cash that I can have."

I guess I am a fool to not get over everything that happened over 20 years ago. I should get over The Holocaust, cause it is old news. (be sure to know that i am not in any way comparing the Exxon spill to The Holocaust)

I am going to be the first to quote these two sources in the same topic.

George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, p. 284

"Cash rules everything around me"

- C.R.E.A.M, Disciples Of The 36 Chambers, Wu Tang Clan, 2004

"There are so many better things to worry about right now--This is my two cents and I may not respond further--No offense--this is so old."

I actually have the capacity to worry about more than one thing at a time. If you do decide to respond further, please clarify all of this stuff "you know" cause "you were there" with more than comments like:

"You know anything about it?--I do."

Up until then I will stick with information from some more trusted sources, such as ABC News, The Chicago Tribune, Greenpeace and others before I trust yours.

The simple truth is that Exxon is not paying their punitive penalty. this is why i believe that CEOs and other executives should have to serve prison time, rather than corporations negotiating punitive penalties that can be renegotiated multiple times. When the CEO has a vested interest in the quality of work performed by the company, and not just the apparently quarterly profits, they might retain qualified personnel, work them within their limits, better monitor their performance and keep them properly trained. Somehow I am sure that is i killed even 20 sea otters i would be doing some jail time, so why shouldn't those responsible for Exxon do so. If Exxon trips into something that appears environmentally friendly the executives claim responsibility for those incidents, so let them take responsibility for these types of incidents also. Then at least they would earn their excessively high salaries and retirement packages.

Does blame solely rest on the shoulders of the CEO? I of course can't prove any of this, but i am sure there were a dozen people between the CEO and the person who made the decison not to buy the radar.

What if Exxon had an unbelievable awesome CEO who was implementing efficiency programs, dishing out money to charitable organizations, planting trees, kissing babies (without making them cry), handing out large amounts of funds to solar research and building wind farms. What if someone 10 levels below this guy, made the decision not to tell anyone above him about the faulty radar...then is it really the CEO's fault? Does the CEO really deserve to be put in jail because his underling's, underling's underling decided to hire a shifty employee?

I like your idea in general, but it could get tricky...

Ultimately, however, the CEO may have been a good guy, but he did not manage the staff properly, whether though incompetance or ignorance. Ignorance is such a common corporate excuse now by managers. All they do, after the fact, is claim they had no idea about their subordinates incompetance, performance issues, lack of adequate training. Somehow we prosecuted Nazi leaders for crimes committed by subordinates, but we accept ignorance by corporate executives as a viable excuse now. This is why knowledge has become a liability. You can go into court and explain that you are not knowledgeable and had no way of knowing, and get a pass, versus the guy who was educated and should have known who will go to prison. If you didn't know what was happening or how to hire people who properly informed you and effectively worked on your behalf, then you should not be employed in that position. The only issue might be intentional malicious acts by employees, which could be a viable excuse i believe.

hmm, i like your posts RCE, they get me thinking

Assuming the CEO said something along the lines of, save money any way possible or if he was the one who actually signed off on not giving the exxon valdez new radar then your allusion to Nazis leaders being blamed for the holocaust fits. I am only a student and this is my first year working in corporation with over 2,000 employees. I got lucky and was chosen out of a hat (literally, weird eh?). If I were to run into a gas pipe and leak gasoline, Natural Gas or oil everywhere, who is to blame? Me? my boss? The president of this company who happily follows the tradition of choosing summer students out of hate?

CEO's dont always stay with companies long, sometimes 1-2 year terms that would mean that they assume leadership of a company already operating with employees already hired. If an employee working there for 20 years falsifies the books under the new CEOs work term, should he or she be put in jail because some CEO long gone had a manager who hired a sketchy employee?

Remember that a CEO reports to a board and is there to carry out what the board wants.

It could be general tacit acceptance, or general policies cost-cutting, implementation delays, or labor/equipment cost savings that may qualify. The CEO would not have to directly approve any specific equipment or labor cost savings for a specific unit. That would have been unenforceable on the Nazis, they did not approve the murder of a specific person, but a classification of people. This would be equivalent to approving the delay of radar upgrades in the entire fleet, even though they knew it was a safety hazard or could reasonably have believed there would be some risk of safety hazard. It also would be valid for those general policies of cost savings by cutting corners through not expending the necessary money for oversight, personnel training, drug testing and maintenance/upgrades. I used to work for one of the largest engineering firms in the world, they tacitly implemented a policy of delaying certification for some safety programs, or interpretting field personnelclassifications as being the office-oriented frequently enough to consider them not necessary for renewals annually. Over thousands of people this was a cost savings. While the management above never direstly explicitly approved these policies, they were no secret and the management above should have noticed the reduced cost in H&SP training without a significant reduction in field project work. Decades ago it would have been a valid excuse to claim that the costs savings could not be tracked at the CEO level, limited computational capacity, but now a CEO can have every individual expenditure tracked on his desktop, and have programs flag any significant changes or trends for his notification. So just doing his due diligence would mean he would be knowledgeable of the changes. So either he would over look them to increase profits, or he was not preforming his duties. All to often US CEOs tend to practice against knowledge of the company operations, because it seems this is a valid excuse in the US to fend off legal liabilities. I do not believe i the claim that i didn't know, they should know. As an engineer if i build a bridge that failed, and claimed i didn't know about some accepted design flaws, which had been discovered in a previous failure or accepted study, or if i failed to notice some improper activity occurring while the information was in front of me, I might be going to jail. Actually all i have to do is show up onsite and see a contactor violating safe work practices, not say anything, and then have one of the construction crew get injured later from the unsafe practices they have been implementing onsite. If a bunch of people die or are injured because a doctor overlooked a symptom or defect in a patient, he might go to jail or at least be fined to a point it won't ever happen again. CEOs affect the health and welfare of 1000s of people, maybe even 1,000,000s by overlooking deficiencies in their companies in the pursuit of increase profits.

If you are still witch hunting for a twenty year old accident, you need to include the United States Coast Guard for licensing and failing to police the U S waterways that the wreck happened in. Anyone that would be aboard and employed and operating a ship in U S waters--especially a U S flagged, inspected vessel shall have the proper competency and knowledge to acquire a USCG tonnage license, which they were and did.

Radar technology--give it a break. These captains and mates have licenses that require knowledge of celestial navigation. I am sure there North up, plotting radar(s) interfaced with PCs with scanned and bathymetric charting were completely operational along with the programmable auto pilot which, in my simple opinion was probably the culprit. If you plug in bad coordinates the autopilot will go to them, and if you aren't "watching" you'll hit whatever you are programmed to.

I don't think anyone is saying the captain wasn't culpable. Incompetence should not be an excuse. This is the other side of the problem. The CEOs and management hire the cheapest labor, and then do not provide adequate working conditions, training, or equipment, but the labor that they hire is also to blame. While i believe the Captain should be punished, i also believe that the management responsible for managing the company should also be held responsible. Current practice is to reward CEOs no matter how bad they perform or what they do. It is simply the same kind of responsibility you would assign people outside of a corporation, hold the corporations accountable as you would people and assign that responsible charge for the incidents to the corporation, unless acts are committed maliciously with intent against corporate interest. Current practice is to let corporations pay for a small portion of damages, which you must sue them for. All this means is the CEOs take a little hit on profits that they make up by restructuring to cut costs. Instead, as the person responsible for the corporation, the CEO should receive similar punishment as if he had been directly in-charge of the person who committed the acts. If Charles Manson had been a CEO in a corporation, instead of an individual directing others, he would be a free man (He never actually did anything himself, his subordinates just claimed he loosely directed them to act). Corporations have become a shield against criminal prosecutions persons in-charge. In a smaller company the owner would be responsible and go to jail, but in corporations the stocklholders do not have much authority to decide the actions (or inactions) of the company, so who does?

CEO's don't command their employee's to crash ships into reefs and this wasn't how it happened anyway--Exxon and it's CEO then, may as well be inanimate objects--We'd be better to vent our frustrations with dynamite on the rocks that punched the holes, it would make more sense and the pain it would inflict wouldn't be as evident to our wallets. I don't really care, but does anyone know how much time Hazlewood was incarcerated for?

A small vessel with four of my friends on it hit the side of a ship full of grain and punched several holes in the side of the ship with it's bulbous bow. The crew member was sleeping and was hitting the watch alarm like a snooze button. Both ship and boat limped into a US port where they were siezed by the US marshal. This is a true story--What do you think should have happened?

Such an incident would be an issue of right-of-way. However, if your friends had the right-of -way and for some strange reason the ship they hit in the side was not visible, well the person responsible for the ship would be liable. Additionally, the company that owned and operated the ship should be held responsible, as it was operating as a course of that business. Now should the personnel responsible for operating the ship have been asleep at the wheel, improperly trained, improperly equipped, drug testing overlooked, or any other cause that the company should have reasonably been waware of as part of its due diligence in managing its people, then the CEO should have also been held personally responsible as an indirect agent. If a CEO or manager goes to prison, that would not adversely effect mine or your pocket book as much as a fine to the corporation, and it would get management results much more effectively (Plus a stint in Pelican bay might do many CEOs some good). A trial of a person is a whole lot cheaper than these ongoing federal law suits that are always being negotiated. Plus, since there is no risk to CEOs, as long as they leave some ambiguity to their directives, they profit no matter what incidents occur. I know in my career, I have to be responsible for the suggestions of my staff. I believe CEOs should have to take on the responsibility for the actions of their companies. It is possible the CEO goes before a jury and gets off, but he gets the opportunity to argue his case in trial. It is also possible that the CEO goes to prison for failure to adequately manage the company that leads to an incident, but the person directly responsible does not because of inadequate training, overworking at company behest, or inadequate equipment to perform the task assign (of course if he ws drunk or on drugs, then he should go to prison). Keep in mind that the port had been in operations for many years and the physical features should have been well known, and those physical features were there before the port. Truthfully, I have worked for many oil company clients, and my job has alwasy been to help remediate the huge number of spills they have had over the last century, some had been continuous pipeline leak or UST leaks that were deemed not worth fixing, since the leak didn't cost as much as repairing the pipes or tank. The problem with many of the corporate oil management is a short-term mindset, a leak is not worth addressing during their tenure in the company when they feel they will have direct responsibility for such leaks/spills/etc.. There is the belief that dragging their feet on the issue and avoiding it will keep them looking profitable until they move up, onward, or quit, and managers are never held truly responsible for things that happen on their watch unless it costs the company a ton of money and they are still in that same position when the issue reaches the public attention. It cost you way more to have them cover up, fight/delay clean-ups, avoid punitive costs, and generally delay resolving problems that allow the issues to persist until a critical failure occurs or the persistent release continues until it gets so huge it covers miles instead of feet. The idea in modern business seems to be save a penny now on maintenance, and hopefully we won't be there when everything falls apart.

The friends boat was liable and it cost some money and insurance and time. But the the owner of the fishing vessel wasn't incarcerated and didn't lose his livelihood(He wasn't there). The crewmember was fired and the boat repaired and life goes on. The only difference between spoiled grain and a huge oil spill, was dumb luck--The people are pretty much the same--Workers, a couple for profit companies and an accident--Except for it not making the news. Every year boats disappear in shipping lanes, collide with each other and land, roll over and sink, break apart or just sink in bad weather--So much of it doesn't make the news and it passes without us seconding guessing how it played out twenty years later.

If the financial and criminal risk is too great in a venture, no one or company would do it and you draw and quarter these companies and their CEOs for the actions of qualified, (but human) workers that are employed by them, that cost of doing the business is going to go up. The only real answer to this is right up my alley--Let's automate it and get rid of all those incompetent people.

Give these companies more reason to execute the lowly worker and reduce their liability. The thing and the people you hate most about them will remain.

Now what is it that will satisfy us--money, but to whom?

Actually the financial risk would be the same or even reduced for the corporations and their investors, the burden of risk on the executives would be greater. The problem more and more is CEOs, having no personal liability in the companies performance, just try to cut corners to raise immediate profits for the quarter and the year-end, so the idea of qualified personnel is becoming more tenuous and broad. I am not suggesting the owner of the fishing boat your friend stuck be held accountable for an incident that is oobviously caused by your friend. However, had the fishing boat struck your friend and killed someone, and the boat captain was obviously less than what you would deem qualified (but hardworking unskilled cheap labor), who should go to prison. If you place more of the burden of responsibility for the actions of a corporation on to the executives, slowly you will get executives who know what they are doing, weeding out the profit at all costs executives (prison or the risk of prison would do this). Thus the corporations would have less risk and liability, pay less for those liabilities, produce better products, spend less on addressing bad PR from numerous incidents. The funny thing is the Japanese seem to know this and it is commonly accepted that their executives take responsibility for their companies actions (and they work for much less, and produce better product, especially automation products). I think our problem is we have no social stigma to attach to CEOs that would effect their behaviors, similar to those in Japanese business. Our CEOs are in most large corporatiosn to get all the money and benefits out of the company they can, no matter what the cost to the investors or the general public (though admittedly this does benefit the china, India, and other emerging sources of cheap relatively unskilled labor). Additionally, there should be no criminal risk involved in a venture to be considered, that is pretty straight forward, you commit the crime you do the time (unless it is done through a corporation where everyone get to deflect liability). The companies that take the greatest financial risks usually are not these large corporations anyways, they tend to stifle creativity and advancement in part because frequently the executives have no ability to recognize advancement and because advancement does not necessarily mean they optimize profits for their own benefit (and it could mean their own demise as they fall behind). The executives of companies like Exxon are appalling at recognizing advancements, and actually tend to fight it, much like Tobacco corporation used to, they are too old to change, relatively unskilled at anything and lack creativity, so what do they do besides be CEOs for such companies. The guys who really take risks are those like Steve Jobs, but other more standard executives tend to find his methods too risky and create too much change faster than they can get on board and squeeze every penny out of the advancements and changes. These are the same kind of executive who ran Xerox and felt the mouse a GUI would never catch on, so they gave it away. These people do not take risks in advancements, they take risks in white collar crimes and cost cutting ventures so they can line their own wallets. The many former executive of companies like Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines are good examples, nearly bankrupt their companies, layoff 1000s, "reorganize" the workers pension funds, but still get huge golden parachutes for a performance so poor they cost investors more to keep employed than retire. And lets not forget Chrysler. I think that, given the very limited knowledge and skill required, these CEOs should have to take at least as much risk as their labor force both financial and criminal risks. If the labor pensions get raided, the executives pensions should be under the same plan ( and no negotiated supplementary plans or buy out agreements). If the executives want to gain the accolades for a profitable company doing very well, they should take responsibility for poor performances also, including prison time if a normal person would be held so liable for similar actions. We expect bartenders and bar owners to be responsible for the actions of drunks who attended their bar, for very little pay, why is it different to expect some level of care and oversight from executives. We will send small business owners to prison for the actions of their small businesses and sometimes employees actions too, if they did not perform due diligence, were negligent, or in some way conspired. Why are corporate executives exempt? I do not expect anything more than you could enforce against private citizens, just that the executives act as the responsible party for criminal acts committed by the corporations so there is a responsible real person who takes on the responsibility for the actions of a corporation. If the corporation was in no way at fault, then the executives should not be imprisoned.

You put so little faith in company CEOs and expect nothing less than perfection from them?

You sound bitter--Last line of your post--Do you believe, scratch that--What do you prescribe now?

Blood letting of Exxon or some boob who was in charge of Exxon?

For what and how?

Who do you send to jail, and give names?

Money is owed, how much?

Who gets it?

I think that you will gnaw at this until your teeth fall out and you won't get any satisfaction.

P.S. Japan has next to nothing for natural resources and that has bred into them over decades, an efficiency factor that we don't posses, yet. So apples to your oranges. California has consumed the Colorado river, why don't you worry about fixing that, or is it status quo and done with?

I didn't realize that the original posts quoted greenpeace many times over--my bad--say what you want about it--Let me know if there is any money coming my way from all this. I'm going to stumble into an Art Bell forum, now.

It is pretty simple. I believe your own bias is cluding your judgement, it sounds like you may have been a oil company laborer. Assign the same kind of responsibility to a corporation that you would assign to any individual person, and make them a responsible party involved in any actions of their employees (except malicious acts). Now, since a person would go to jail for involvement in such action, even through negligence, we should the corporation should receive the same. The person who should be liable on behalf of the corporation is the top of the corporation, the person at top responsible for the final decision-making, find where the buck stops, the CEO. If it is discovered the the CFO, COO, or some lower management made a decision explicitly against company policy, then it would be them. However, foregoing any direct acts, let the guy who leads take responsibility for leading. If a football team loses, through no specific fault of any individual, we assign the responsibility on the guys we assume are leading the team, the quarterback for the less knowledgeable. In a corporation, the guy who should receive this honor of responsibility should be the guy who wants to claim the glory for guiding the corporation, or misguiding if it commits a criminal act. Attempts to muddy the waters with the idea ok identifying a specific person directly responsible for mismanagement is too expensive and troublesome, when mismanagement occurs either because of implied direction or negligence by the corporate executives, so let them take responsibility, and their lawyers can present evidence of alternative responsible parties on behalf of the corporation. Maybe the general public sitting in the jury box will not vote for jail time for the CEO. However, I bet you would see more attempts at jury tampering by corporations rather than the CEO take such risk, and additional crimes piling up. If you claim the guy in charge was a boob, well you can go to jail for you own negligence, so he should also. This would save us a ton of money, by just making the CEOs responsible for the actions of the corporations. Some problematic corporations in a competitive market might fail. If Exxon expends a ton of money under the direction of the CEO for his defense, they are one of many companies, so they lose market share to Chevron, Tosco or Shell because they mark up their product. In the end you will get some one from the company responsible for the management failures in jail ( I am sure most CEOs will spend sufficient company time and money to identify someone to fall on their sword for the company).

Just remember that the board of directors is higher ranked then the CEO...

If the board of directors votes to implement management practices in the company, effectively taking on control of the organization, then jail them. However, typically the CEO is responsible for the ultimate management and operations of the company, and the board of directors is responsible for those decisions that are so critical they need a majority vote from those with financial interest in the company. This is similar to the US government, with a judicial arm, the CEO is equivalent to the president and the Board is equivalent to Congress, ultimately congress has authority over the president as they control legislation and finances. As Truman said, " the buck stops here", CEOs need to be forced to live by that standard, since they no longer practice it themselves and no longer have any real financial interest in the corporations they run.

The buck stops here and so do I. I was a commercial fisherman then and have never been employed or owned any stock with an oil company. The accident aversely affected me worse than you can imagine, but there is no sense in crying over spilled milk or oil. I don't think you have a clue about it and to call me biased? Read your rants.

Hmm, it is obvious to anyone that you present an extremely biased unsupported opinion. Nevermind the attempts at red herrings, misinformation, emotional tyrades, racial generalizations, and other logical errors in order to undermine a argument that presents the solution to resolve the issue of corporations failing to meet their obligations and attempts to force them to meet their obligations being stiffled by the huge legal cost of prosecuting wealthy corporations with substantial influence. Since corporations continue to operate as if they are not accountable to the citizens of the US, the persons responsible for the overall management of such corporations must believe that there is no risk to them for such behaviors, if superficially insulated in ambiguities and deflecting responsibilities. It is easier to cut through such insulation and get right at those ultimately responsible for managing the corporations. Such direct decisive actions would get better responses out of these corporations. There are no accidents that could not have been prevented for substantially less then the clean up afterwards would cost, but many corporations espouse one public image and act in another to cut cost or increase cost savings. If executives had some liability as leaders of their corporations for the actions that occur on their watch, they would immediately create a corporate environment that addressed risk issues more frequently beforehand. Obviously they could not be held responsible for the malicious actions of employees or others, but for "accidents" that occur during "routine" operations.. Treat executives like the bartenders at a bar, who instead of serving drinks, they provide management and directions. If a bartender (or any individual person for that matter) is paid for service rendered to a customer, is complacent in his due diligence and allows that customer leave the establishment who then drives off and runs down a crosswalk full of cub scouts, what happens to the bartender? Similarly, if an executive is paid for management services rendered, is complacent in adequate due diligence and an incident occurs which would be a criminal act for any individual citizen to commit, the executive should receive some criminal punishment. Corporations have become an front for people to deflect any responsibility just by claiming ignorance. If you hold someone responsible then that person be paid to provide management services that give him the authority to effectively implement a management decision that would immediately make changes occur with out being ambiguously circumvented by some higher level of management and the capability to be fully knowledgeable about all aspects of the corporations operations. This person should then be expected to be knowledgable about the corporation as part of his due diligence, even if he claims ignorance he should have been knowledgable (much like you could not claim to be ignorant about which side of the road to drive on after hitting someone, it was your duty as a responsible driver to know, and the courts can expect you should have known as prosecute as such). The added effect of such enforcement is that the boards of corporations to avoid potential liabilities would lean more towards executives who were more knowledgeable up front about corporate operations.

They did handle it badly and I am on their side--Enough is enough(P.S. sorry about the last post-I read it again and it sounded completely awful). It would be like beating a dog the day after it did something wrong. It was a shipwreck and there was no villain just victims(unless you want to call ourselves and our insatiable need for oil, the villain). Nobody wanted this to happen.

They threw so much money at the spill--It was crazy. You should have been there and you would understand why I believe money changing hands now would be completely fruitless. Now hind sight is 20/20 and we can deem how it should and would be spent to make everything all better, but the land and sea has healed itself for the most part(and certainly not because we did anything).

Who should have it? Natives(Aleuts) The Afognak native corporation is just about done deforesting the archipelago and they could use the cash.

Who should give it? Exxon or the entire oil industry. Either way it is going to come out of my pocket eventually.

This thing was a terrible accident, but the damage it did is and was disputable along with the clean up efforts and their affect.

The fishing industry was irrevocably damaged. The salmon industry is dead, mostly because of fish farming and lack of knowledge of the people who consume it. The market is simply gone--Oil's fault?

It sounds like you are looking for revenge, and I just want to know what for--that you may go there someday and be upset at the damage that can't even be seen.

"oil companies are crooks, we should tax them to hell"

My last reply to this comment would be that you should look up the difference between the word tax and fine.

If it matters to ya, replace Tax with fine

Not all oil companies are crooks, we should only fine those who are. When it is apparent they are, we should investigate them. I think a big part of the problem is our law enforcement and justice department are to lazy, inept and/or corrupt to deal with corporate white collar crimes effectively.

yep! you cant audit a fortune 500 company with a bunch of 2nd year business summer students. Especially when said company has a CFA or something along those lines. Go Canada! you know how to audit!

CFA - financial accountant