The Gulf Oil disaster should not be a place for political bents or muckraking – should it?

I just read two articles from the Financial Post; one I take with a bit of skepticism over whether it portrays the whole story fairly and the other is, well simply unbelievable.

In the first article, author Lawrence Solomon begins with the title “Avertible Catastrophe” and it is, before reading it, about the BP Oil Disaster. He begins the article by applauding the preparedness and capability of the Dutch to anticipate “looming catastrophe and know how to head it off”. It seems pretty clear that in the Netherlands, they take oil drilling and the attendant risks it presents very seriously. They are prepared for disaster. The Dutch know how to handle disastrous oil spills.

Mr. Solomon then goes on to explain the substantial offers to help made by the Dutch and the repeated refusals to those offers of help made by our government. Mr. Solomon is critical of Americans, the US government, US environmental rules, US labor unions, and, possibly, US workers.

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The families of the 11 victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster faced severe limitations on their ability to seek justice for the tragic loss of their loved ones due to the negligence of BP and others. That was the case under the law before the House passed the SPILL Act (Securing Protections for the Injured from Limitations on Liability).

The SPILL ACT will actually correct the state of the law in a number of worthy areas that relate to the Gulf Disaster:

• Amends the Death on the High Seas Act to permit the recovery of non-economic damages; human damages, including the pain & suffering of families of the dead workers.
• Amends the Jones Act to permit the recovery of non-economic damages.
• Repeals the limitation of liability for vessel owners; limiting recovery to only the value of the vessel involved.
• Amends the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) to make clear that states damaged by the Gulf Disaster can bring lawsuits and seek remedies in their own state courts.
• Makes contracts and agreements “gagging” individuals from disclosing information about offshore oil spills and discharge of other pollutants; agreements that reportedly BP attempted to enforce.
• Amends the US Bankruptcy Code preventing corporations liable for oil spills from severing their assets to avoid liabilities owed to injured victims. Among other things, the Act eliminates the ability for the debtor to seek additional protections afforded under Chapter 15 of the code.

The SPILL Act takes outdated laws and brings them into the 21^st century, according to House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi:

“The SPILL ACT will modernize these laws to ensure that BP and other responsible parties are held fully accountable for their actions and to ensure that families of those killed or injured in the BP oil spill and other such tragedies are justly compensated.”

The passage of this bill eliminates a few of the tools that responsible parties likely planned to use in an effort to limit the damages they owe to injured victims of the Gulf Disaster.

If the tort reformers are not hypocrites, they are likely to oppose these changes as victimizing corporations. If tort reformers avoid hypocrisy in this instance, one must wonder how they justify their position in this illustration of where going “easy” on corporate America has gotten us. If tort reformers are hypocrites in this instance, why listen to them about anything?

Amidst concerns that the families of those killed in the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion would not be able to recover financially for their losses, Rep. John Conyers (MI) and Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA) have introduced HR 5503, the Securing Protections for the Injured from Limitations on Liability Act, or SPILL Act.The bill is not only geared at helping the families of those killed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it also focuses on amending two laws that date back to the 1920s and repealing an outmoded law from the mid-19^th century.

The antiquated Limitation of Liability Act (LOLA) was passed in 1851 in an effort to make U.S. ship owners competitive with their European counterparts, whose liability was limited under European admiralty codes. LOLA limited a ship owner’s liability to the post-incident value of the vessel and its salvageable goods, thus insulating owners from unlimited liability. The act was intended to protect against the loss of cargo, at a time when a ship was much more likely to sink or be substantially damaged at sea. Transocean, owner of the semisubmersible Deepwater Horizon, is currently attempting to use LOLA to limit its liability in the explosion to the current value of the rig as it sits at the bottom of the ocean, $27 million. Sen. Charles Schumer (NY) has also introduced a bill, the “Remuneration for Ecological and Societal Tolls Occasioned by Reckless Errors Act,” that would repeal LOLA. (more…)