Blame the Seafarers? Law in the wake of the Exxon Valdez

The Exxon Valdez spill was famously blamed on a drunken sailor.  The Supreme Court barred punitive damages and maritime law blocked recovery to all but fishermen and those whose property was contaminated by the spill.  The strict liability provisions that followed were good - though the limits on liability are dubious in some respects.  But no one hesitated to criminalize the captain who was found to have been intoxicated.  Similarly the Costa Concordia  captain has been made the principal villain of that wreck on the coast of Italy.  Fontugne argues that criminalization has gone too far. - GWC
Environment, Law, and History: Law in the wake of the Exxon Valdez:
by Elisabeth Fontugne//Stetson College of Law
Abstract: "In 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling enough oil to deface the beaches and inlets of Prince William Sound. A year and a half later, Congress spoke, passing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. And twenty years later, the Supreme Court enunciated a new bright-line rule for punitive damages in maritime cases, closing out the long years of litigation that had followed the spill. For seafarers, however, the grounding of the Exxon Valdez only marked the beginning. It heralded the advent of an era in which the global criminalization of mariners would become the rule. Putting out to sea had always been risky business. But making landfall, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, could prove more perilous to mariners than any ocean journey. Against the judiciary’s successive interpretations of the tanker’s accident, this Article argues that the grounding of the Exxon Valdez can only be properly understood within its maritime context. It demonstrates that the real punishment for the spill was imposed not on Exxon, but on the men and women who choose to live and work at sea. Finally, it exposes the unfair legal climate in which mariners must now operate, and urges the seafaring community to act to change the law."

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