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Alaska Supreme Court rules against Exxon in spill cases Native villages can claim compensation for spill damage on acres in process of being transferred; local governments can claim for workers' time spent on spill T.A. Badger Associated Press Writer
The Alaska Supreme Court has issued two opinions arising from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, allowing local governments to pursue potentially millions of dollars in damages from the Exxon Corp.
The state’s highest court will allow seven local governments to pursue compensation from Exxon for the services its municipal workers could not provide when they were diverted to help minimize damage from the spill.
David Oesting, an Anchorage lawyer representing communities, fishermen and others suing Exxon over the spill, estimated that the seven municipalities could be entitled to up to $50 million.
The justices also ruled Nov. 22 that three Alaska Native villages could claim monetary damages for 90,000 acres in the process of being transferred to them by the federal government.
Ed Burwell, an Exxon spokesman in Irving, Texas, would not comment on either Supreme Court opinion, saying he had not yet read them.
During a 1995 trial, the judge instructed jurors to limit their damage deliberations for lost use to 130,000 acres that had been fully conveyed to the English Bay, Chenega and Port Graham village corporations. Exxon lawyers had argued that the corporations could not claim they had lost use of land that did not yet belong to them.
But the Supreme Court found that the lower court and Exxon had misinterpreted the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted the year after the Exxon Valdez drove onto a charted reef and dumped some 11 million gallons into Prince William Sound.
Selection, not conveyance, the fulcrum The corporations had selected the 90,000 acres, Justice Alexander Bryner wrote, and the 1990 law “expressly uses selection, not conveyance, as the fulcrum for recovery.”
Sam Fortier, who represents the three corporations, said much of the selected land — in upper Prince
William Sound and along the southern coast of the Kenai Peninsula — was more damaged than the 130,000 acres.
“We think it would be a significantly greater damages amount’’ than for the 130,000 acres of conveyed land, Fortier said.
The villages were awarded $5.9 million for land and archaeological damages in the 1995 trial. But that amount was subtracted from a $23.3 million settlement received earlier from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund because some issues in the cases overlapped.
Fortier said some future damages awarded for the selected land could also be subtracted, but he indicated that the substantial harm done to that acreage could boost those monetary damages beyond the fund settlement, though “it’s premature to start throwing around numbers.”
In the other ruling, the justices ruled that the seven municipalities could collect compensation for work that wasn’t done by their employees, who had been diverted to Exxon Valdez oil spill tasks.
The local governments are Kodiak Island Borough and the cities of Seward, Cordova, Old Harbor, Ouzinkie, Port Lions and Larsen Bay.
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