Potential Litigation

My apologies to the people in the vicinity of Bhopal, India on midnight Dec. 2, l984 for referring to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as potentially the worst man-made disaster in history. Damages from this year’s incident are still growing. But they’ve got a long way to go to catch up with those from the Union Carbide gas release in Bhopal. The lives lost there were five times those of 9/11 and the number of disabled over thirty eight thousand.  The negligence leading to this incident is of the same nature as that alleged of BP. Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, whose retraction of his initial apology was prompt as the apology itself, is unlikely to visit India any time soon. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.

This and the Gulf oil spill are similar in the sense that they were both man-made. Where they differ is that in Bhopal the victims were from what was then a third world nation and the potential legal defendant a corporation from the world’s super power. No contest! Today the potential plaintiffs are citizens of that super power and the defendant a “foreign corporation” in a nation where the term is a bit redundant. This is truer of really big corporations particularly those that produce oil.

Granted, the damages in the BP case are hard to assess. It may be difficult and not necessarily fair, but there have been cases where a finite value has been placed on human lives.  Most of the damages from the Gulf spill, apart from those to wildlife, are directed at property and the livelihoods dependant on it.  The direct losses to a lifetime Gulf commercial fisherman and a seasonal waitress in an area restaurant may be quite different. However the litigation is resolved I see no way the potential plaintiffs, who may number in the millions, can be adequately or accurately compensated for damage that is incalculable.

The arguments by those sympathetic to BP’s position, we already know this includes much if not all of the Republican Party, should be familiar by now. “A lot of the claims are demonstrably fraudulent.” “They’re asking outlandish compensation.” “The claimant is an imposter” There will be instances where these sorts of allegations are true. During Katrina we were reminded often by right wingers of the looting in New Orleans, as though that somehow diminished the damage to the overwhelming majority of law abiding citizens.

Whatever the truth of allegations over BP’s creation of this mess, their behavior in its aftermath doesn’t inspire confidence. Of the $20 billion pledged to be put in escrow only $207 million, about one percent, has been paid. I’ve been trying to say this in more delicate words, but there doesn’t seem to be any better way. Not only for the financial distress to those in the area, but for the harm to the planet, BP should be made to pay through the nose!