so BP is getting $4.5 Billion in fines and corporate manslaughter charges… not sure how you serve that term…
also… the top officials on the rig the day of are getting 11 counts of seaman’s manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges for each of the 11 deaths on board.
and on top of that:
The grand jury also charged BP’s second-highest ranking representative at the company’s unified command post with hiding information from Congress and allegedly lying to law enforcement officials.
The company also will plead guilty to a felony count of obstruction of Congress, a misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act and a misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty.
i am sure much of this will be appealed down but hopefully some of it sticks and it becomes a pattern.
too bad it takes so long for this to resolve itself… pretty sure most people have long forgotten about it and are more focused on more rececnt tragedies now.
I think the corporate manslaughter will just be a monetary fine. I hope it all sticks and that they get convictions on all the criminal charges. Corporations need to understand that negligance is unnacceptable when your workers’ lives are at risk.
They haven’t even started the civil trial yet. These are just the criminal penalties. From what I understand, the potential civil penalties were in excess of $20B, that’s in addition to the $23B in assets they’ve already liquidated to fund the cleanup and claims they paid out already. Total direct costs related to the spill could exceed $50B when it’s all said and done.
As much as I’d like to see that, seems pretty unlikely:
EDIT: trying to copy tables into this forum doesn’t work too well. Basically they made 16 billion of net income in 2011 alone, around 10 billion in 07, 08, and 09 each and a loss of 3 billion in 2010 most likely due to the cleanup.