Three Presidents and two decades after the fact, the Supreme Court ruled recently that a 2.5 billion dollar punitive decision against Exxon for damages caused by the Valdez Disaster was unconstitutional. 

Ruling that Exxon’s decision to let a skipper whom the company knew to be an alcoholic pilot the 1.48 million barrel oil tanker was “worse than negligent, but less than malicious,” the United States’ highest court declared that the massive settlement against Exxon—already chopped down from the initial five billion settled upon by a jury in the case—was out of scope with existing maritime law. 

Now, I can understand the court’s ruling that, after 3.4 billion dollars already spent on cleanup and fines, a five billion dollar punishment would be excessive.  And I applaud Justice Alito’s decision to refrain from ruling on the case because he holds Exxon stock. But the court’s eventual settlement on a 507 million dollar decision still feels weak. 

Exxon is currently the most profitable company in the history of humanity, making 40.6 billion dollars in 2007 alone. While that doesn’t make Exxon more deserving of an unfair fine, I do think it means that punitive damage findings against them ought to be proportionally higher, to carry the same weight.

Cutting this settlement to the point of near-irrelevance seriously undermines the ability of juries to fiscally punish irresponsible corporations, and, in the words of Warner Chabot of Ocean Conservency, gives  “a get-out-of-jail card to every potential corporate polluter in America.”