In the News
ExxonMobil Verdict Cries for Examination by Voters
By: Chairman Joe Turnham
Opelika-Auburn News
Jackpot Justices
“We were 100% sure they had defrauded the state. The evidence, letters from their own attorneys warned the company they were not paying the correct amounts to the state, that’s all we needed to convict.” I tell you, Exxon is laughing all the way to the bank.” This is the reaction quoted by Joseph King of Montgomery, the foreman of the last jury in the ExxonMobil Fraud Case after learning that the Alabama Supreme Court by an 8-1 verdict threw out all punitive damages against the world’s largest corporation.
In November of 2003, a second Montgomery County jury (see Joseph King statement above) returned a $102 million compensatory award and an $11.8 billion punitive damage award against ExxonMobil. A democratic trial judge Tracey McCooey then cut the punitive damage award to $3.6 billion. It then took the republican court until 2007 (after two more general election cycles) to render their 8-1 decision - $51.9 million in compensatory damages and zero, zip punitive damages. The court’s only democrat, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb dissented.
Since 2002 Republican Supreme Court Justices have taken $5.5 million in campaign contributions from lobbyists, business PAC’s, lawyers and ‘civil justice reform’ groups allied with ExxonMobil interests. A group called the Alabama Civil Reform Committee PAC alone gave $1.8 million to the 8 republican justices who rendered this ExxonMobil decision.
Lest the two partisan opinions of this matter in today’s paper by me and my able counterpart be strictly skewed as a partisan subject, it should be noted that both democratic and republican governors, conservation commissioners, and plaintiff attorneys were involved on behalf of the taxpayers against ExxonMobil, including Gov. Bob Riley.
ExxonMobil’s recent annual profits were $36.13 billion (larger than the entire economies of 125 of 184 nations on earth). Their recent quarterly profits were $9.92 billion or $116 million every 24 hours or $1,080 per second. Yet, oil drawn from our own waters by ExxonMobil sells back to Alabama taxpayers as gasoline for over $3 per gallon.
The ExxonMobil punitive damage award of $3.6 billion represented only 5 weeks of ExxonMobil’s earnings. Yet this award money would have made Alabama taxpayers whole by repairing over 500 county roads and bridges. The interest alone earned on these funds would have funding the $200-600 million annual funding gap in Medicaid. It would have added thousands of new state troopers and sheriff deputies and built new 5 new prisons, drug addition centers and endowed their operations. It could have funded laptop computers for every single Alabama student and awarded college scholarships to thousands of graduates. It could have protected tens of thousands of acres of rare Alabama lands.
Trivial lawsuits and unfair damage awards are not the norm and are not hurting Alabama business or industrial recruitment. This is a political scare tactic perpetrated by the republican political keepers of the likes of Exxon.
Alabama voters need to render their own verdict in this travesty of justice by voting out judges who trample justice and dismiss jury verdicts on whimsical facts. The Alabama Democratic Party has time and time again offered great candidates for the high court and we will again in 2008 and beyond. Give us a chance to balance the courts again.
