Local fishermen still wait for Exxon payment

Source: The world

ASTORIA (AP) — Local fisherman say every year or so, they are told their payments are coming from the case against Exxon Valdez in the infamous 1989 oil spill. Each year the payments don’t show up.

They’ve waited 19 years for a conclusion. Some have lost faith in the legal system as they’ve been watching for what amounts to an average payment of $75,000 a person. Others have died while it remained tied up in court battles.

When the oil spill shut down the Alaskan waters that Abby Ihander had fished for decades, the Astoria gillnetter believed the justice system would set things right. He signed onto a lawsuit against Exxon Shipping to recoup his losses.

In 1994, when a jury awarded the plaintiffs $5 billion in punitive damages, Ihander expected his check would be in the mail soon. For a while, 32,000 plaintiffs in the case shared his rosy outlook. But like 6,000 other plaintiffs in the case, Ihander died while it was tied up in legal delays, The Daily Astorian reports.

For the remaining plaintiffs, the wait should be over soon. In February, the case finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court — the end of the line for appeals. The justices are expected to issue a final ruling on punitive damages this month.

Dozens of fishermen from the Lower Columbia River trek to Alaska every year for its lucrative summer salmon seasons. About 1,300 of the 32,200 plaintiffs in the Exxon case are Oregonians; 5,000 live in Washington.

Abby’s son Mark Ihander, 56, also a plaintiff in the Exxon case, is heading to Alaska this month for a difficult season. It will be his first time fishing Cook Inlet without his dad alongside him. He said he’s given up on hoping for a settlement check.

“I’m not the optimist my father was,” he said. “We’ve been led down the path so many times, it’s like crying wolf.”

When the 987-foot supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, it spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil that spread over more than 3,000 square miles, killing thousands of birds and marine mammals, tarnishing shorelines and closing the fisheries many Alaskan communities rely on.

The Cook Inlet driftnet fishery, where many Oregon North Coast fishermen had fished for years, was completely shut down for the year.

The price of fish and the value of fishing permits plummeted, and neither have recovered to their previous levels. Meanwhile, the cost of fishing continues to rise.

Exxon-Mobil officials argue the company has already paid for the mistake with $3.4 billion in compensation, cleanup and fines. But the thousands of plaintiffs in the Exxon Shipping v. Baker case contend the company hasn’t done enough to make up for their economic hardship.

For 19 years, the courts have agreed, and for 19 years Exxon has appealed their rulings. Fourteen years have passed since an Anchorage jury granted 32,000 plaintiffs $5 billion in damages to make up for the losses after the spill.

While the court system has labored over Exxon’s appeals, Astoria plaintiff Jim Wells has been fighting as president of Salmon for All to keep the gillnetters’ share of the shrinking Columbia River salmon seasons.

He’s skeptical of what the Supreme Court decision on the Exxon case could mean for liquefied natural gas tankers traveling up the river, if the justices decide the company is not responsible for the damages its vessel caused.

Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from the case because he owns Exxon stock, which leave eight justices on the bench to make a decision. An even split would leave the appeals court ruling intact.

Wells said over its 19 years in the court system the case has become a test of society’s values.

“This is a case of the corporation versus the little man,” he said. “If this case were to be thrown out completely, I can’t help but feel there’s no hope for the little man against the corporation.”