Something even I didn’t know: the legal fight over the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska still hasn’t been concluded.  Today, some bad news:

A U.S. appeals court on Friday lowered the punitive damages owed by Exxon Mobil Corp. because of the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska to $2.5 billion from $4.5 billion.

The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that it sliced the penalty almost in half in light of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on punitive damages.

The punitive damage ruling — originally $5 billion in 1994 — has been the subject of a decade-long legal battle between the oil giant and 32,000 fishermen, Alaska natives and property owners who were awarded the damages for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Now I know some are thinking “why are you complaining?  They still have 2.5 billion to pay, how much is enough?”.  I’d refer those people to the definition of “punitive damages”, courtesy of Findlaw (the direct URL wouldn’t work if copied, so it’s not here):

punitive damages
: damages awarded in cases of serious or malicious wrongdoing to punish or deter the wrongdoer or deter others from behaving similarly.

“To punish or DETER”.  For a simple example, say I’m your neighbor and I (unintentionally, though recklessly — assume I was drunk or something) toss a brick through your window & it hits one of your kids in the head.  You sue me and win.  You get awarded not only compensatory damages (i.e.: enough money to fix your window & pay the doctor bill from that huge lump on your kids head), but punitive damages; the intent of those damages is to say to anyone else who would do what I did — playfully toss objects while drunk — that if they harm anyone it will cost them a painful amount.

In the case of the Exxon Valdez spill, their conduct that led to the oil spill was found to have been reckless, & the punitive damage amount was $5 billion; it is now half that.  So the question is, is this amount enough to deter ExxonMobil and other oil companies from slacking on safety in transport?

Here’s a link to some of their financial info, straight from the source.  You tell me…