By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Exxon Mobil Corp. said it will not appeal a court decision requiring it to pay millions of dollars in interest on $507.5 million in punitive damages stemming from a 1989 oil spill in Prince William Sound.

"I inked the deal with them about noon today," said plaintiffs' attorney David Oesting said June 29 in Anchorage.

Exxon will pay $470.2 million in interest on the damages. A wire transfer of those funds was to be made July 1, Oesting said.

He described the latest action as "a bittersweet victory," with the total funds finally coming to the plaintiffs as "way below the amount we felt was owed to our clients."

In 1994, an Anchorage jury awarded plaintiffs $5 billion, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halved that amount and the U.S. Supreme Court later reduced the total to $507.5 million.

The money will be distributed by late August or early September to some 32,677 parties whose claims are already processed, plus an additional 2,000 to 3,000 people for damages in unoiled fisheries, he said.

Remaining in dispute it $70 million in court fees, and Exxon Mobil has petitioned the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for a rehearing on that claim, he said.

Oesting said he wasn't surprised to learn that the oil giant chose not to make further appeals on the interest fees.

"The law was very clear in my mind on the interest issue," he said.

In a ruling issued earlier in June by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court, ExxonMobil was ordered to pay those interest feels. That ruling nearly doubled the payout to fishermen, business owners and others who argued they were damaged by the environmental disaster. A number of studies conducted over the past 20 years since the spill have shown that the region never fully recovered from the disaster.

The U.S. Supreme Court a year ago ruled that ExxonMobil should pay punitive damages of $507.5 million, but later sent back to the appeals court the matter of whether ExxonMobil had to pay interest on those punitive damages.

Exxon argued that if interest had to be paid, the interest fees should be calculated from the date the punitive damages were determined by the Supreme Court. The appeals court, however, ruled that the interest should run from 1996, when the original settlement was recorded at the court.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at

margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.