Last week marked an important milestone in one of the nation’s longest-running and highest-profile legal disputes. The LA Times reported this weekend that the victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill have begun receiving the first payments of punitive damages – nearly two decades after the infamous accident destroyed their livelihoods.

The details of the case are well known. In 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, under the command of a captain with a record of alcohol abuse, ran into a reef off the Alaskan coastline, dumping 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound and devastating its fragile and pristine ecosystem. More than 32,000 commercial fisherman and Alaskan natives filed a class action suit against Exxon Shipping Co. for its negligence, and in 1994, they were awarded $287 million in compensatory damages and $5 billion in punitive damages by an Anchorage jury. Exxon spent 14 years appealing this decision, during which time nearly 6,000 of the plaintiffs passed away.

In 2006, on its third hearing of the case, the Ninth Circuit reduced the plaintiffs’ punitive damages award to $2.5 billion, citing newly-clarified Supreme Court decisions concerning the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages, as well as Exxon’s efforts to clean up the Sound. Still not satisfied, Exxon petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider the amount, asking the Court to address among other things whether maritime law even permits an award of punitive damages against a corporation for employee misdeeds

The Supreme Court held that punitive damages were permitted in addition to compensatory damages under maritime law, but only on a 1:1 ratio. It therefore vacated the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and reset the maximum punitive damages to $507.5 million, a sum that would take Exxon less than a week to earn based on reports that in 2007, the oil giant earned profits at a rate of nearly $1300 per second.

As CAC President Doug Kendall explained after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the decision to dramatically slash the amount of punitive damages that Exxon was required to pay was an affront to progressive values of equal justice and corporate accountability:

The Court’s reduction of punitive damages in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker is a nakedly activist decision that pulls its standard for limiting damages out of thin air, demonstrates hostility to the role of Congress, and continues a pattern of ignoring the Framers’ views on the importance of civil juries. Progressives would do well to treat this decision with resounding scorn, and highlight it as a textbook example of why the Supreme Court matters…

The Court crafts a 1:1 ratio between compensatory and punitive damages based on his own calculation of what ought to be reasonable rather than any actual law or precedent. This is judicial lawmaking at its worst, and it deprives maritime law trial judges and juries of their long-standing power and responsibility to determine the appropriate remedy for reckless corporate behavior.

As Justice Stevens notes in a pointed dissent, the Court cannot identify a single state court in the entire country that has adopted the Court’s 1:1 ratio. Stevens also explains that the majority ignores the will of Congress, which deliberately chose not to restrict the availability of punitive damages in this context.

The Supreme Court’s ruling fixed the maximum amount of punitive damages, and in August, Exxon agreed to pay three-quarters of that $507.5 million, resulting in the first round of payments last week.

However, even now, the legal battle is not over. Exxon has continued to challenge the plaintiffs’ claims that it owes $488 million in interest on the punitive damages. The plaintiffs have argued that Exxon should have to pay 5.9% interest on the final damages, dating back to the original 1996 district court ruling, a claim Exxon disputes on the grounds that the lower courts did not award interest, and that the deterrent effect of punitive damages will be achieved without awarding interest to the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court has sent that issue back to the Ninth Circuit, where it is set to be argued next Monday.

In the meantime, the quiet arrival of the first punitive damages settlement checks is hardly a victory for the victims of the accident. The payments have arrived in a year of intense national debate surrounding domestic oil production and rapidly-expanding development of the Alaskan North Slope, little of which has focused on the failure of justice and corporate accountability that has followed the country’s most notorious oil spill. The payments also arrive just one month after Exxon Mobil posted the highest quarterly profits in the history of American business. As the LA Times recounts, the plaintiffs’ economic suffering has long since been compounded by utter disillusionment: after nearly two decades of seemingly-endless litigation, the prospect of appropriate damages for their extraordinary loss has all but disappeared.

Originally posted at Text & History. Hannah McCrea is proud to work at the Constitutional Accountability Center.