Every major news outlet and countless bloggers have now weighed in on the Supreme Court’s opinion yesterday in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker. Howard Bashman has a nice collection of the mainstream media links.
In addition to those stories, here are a couple of opinion pieces with diametrically opposite responses to the opinion. Greg Palast writes about the $500 million in punitive damages: “It’s so cheap, it’s like a permit to spill.” On the other side of the spectrum, the U.S. Chamber hails the decision in a blog post entitled “Towards Predictability and Common Sense.”
In a couple of odd footnotes to this saga:
A Wall Street Journal article on the Exxon Shipping Co. opinion mentions that after the accident, the Exxon Valdez continued to sail the seas as a single-hulled Exxon oil tanker, ferrying crude outside of the U.S., until earlier this year when it was sold to a Hong Kong company, which converted it to carry bulk ore. It is now known as the Dong Fang Ocean.
And Newsday.com has a story about the current whereabouts of the infamous Captain Joseph Hazelwood, whose drunken encounter with a reef off Bligh Island twenty years ago caused this whole mess. The reporter asked Captain Hazelwood to comment on the Supreme Court’s opinion and he said he had “no reaction.”
