Still struggling to cap the gushing deepwater well in the Gulf, BP's counsel is likely busy preparing to battle potential litigation over the corporation's involvement in the disaster despoiling the Gulf waters, destroying livelihoods and wildlife.
Law professors Gregg Polsky and Dan Markel, in an op-ed for The New York Times, write that it is time for juries to become aware that punitive damages leveled at corporations like BP are tax-deductible.
Polsky, a law professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Markel, a law professor at Florida State University, write:
BP might soon be added to the list of payers of punitive damages for its role in the Gulf oil spill. Perhaps with that in mind, the Senate recently approved a measure to repeal deductibility for punitive damages.
The measure is well intentioned. But because most cases are settled before they reach a jury, it won't work. Fortunately, there's a better approach.
It may not entirely curb the ability of large corporations to limit the impact of punitive damages, but the professors say that tax-aware "juries would probably award higher punitive damages to offset the fact that punitive damages were tax-deductible. But more important, the prospect of tax-aware jurors would also raise the amounts before trial - when, again, most cases are actually resolved. This is because the amount of a settlement depends on the amount that a jury is expected to award after a trial. If tax-aware juries became the norm, plaintiffs would push for higher settlements, and thus both settling and non-settling defendants would bear the correct amount of punishment."
See their entire op-ed here.
ersity of Michigan and former head of the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department, maintains that the oil spill - unlikely a result of weather - increasingly appears to have been caused by "negligence or worse in the events leading to the explosion of the rig." So, Uhlmann writes, "Now it's up to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to ensure that the legal response to the calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is better than the emergency response."
The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has reportedly