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Can We Please Put James Carville in Charge?

By Joe Consumer

Even if you didn?t watch last night, you no doubt heard bits and pieces of President Obama?s Oval Office speech.  Here?s a bit:

Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.

Hmm.  I have my doubts.  Already reports indicate that BP isn?t going quietly along with this. The Washington Post reports,  "Most importantly, [BP] wants some sense that there's going to be a limit to its liability, and that it won't have to make up the lost wages of every rig worker sidelined by the administration's six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling."

Close your eyes for a second and imagine that ragin' James Carville were in charge.  If you weren?t watching Larry King last night (I know, who was?), you missed this:

KING: What would you tell him?

CARVILLE: I would say you are the largest tortfeasa -- tortfeasor -- in the history of the United States. It is possible, we're looking into it. It may be even criminal negligence.

Now, let me tell you the way this is going to work, because we're a country that holds third graders accountable, we're certainly going to hold you accountable for everything that you've done. And we're going to start out and -- and I'm going to suggest a figure here and I want you to react to it, to put it in escrow. And let's just start at $20 billion. And then I'd see how they reacted.

And I would be very tough. And I would explain to them that -- that it's very important that everybody know that you clean up your mess. You know, you walk in -- you walk into my children's room and say, clean up your mess. Tell BP just because they're a gazillion, billion dollar company, they've got to clean their mess up, too. And if I was the president, I would make that very clear and very plain in a very determined way.

Oh and by the way, if you don?t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you may have missed the op ed from University of Chicago Professor Richard Epstein (visiting scholar at the rabidly pro-?tort reform" Manhattan Institute!)  called ?BP Doesn't Deserve a Liability Cap; The best way to deter future spills is to expose drillers to the full costs of any mistake and not let any company without proper insurance near an oil derrick.?  Woops, guess the Manhattan Institute's quality control department was out sick yesterday.  Here's a little of what Epstein wrote:

Tort remedies are essential to protect people (and their property) who do not have contractual relations with defendants from harms such as air and water pollution. The legal system should never allow self-interested parties to keep for themselves all the gains from dangerous activities that unilaterally impose losses on others?which is why the most devout defender of laissez-faire must insist, not just concede, that tough medicine is needed in these cases. ?

A tough liability system does more than provide compensation for serious harms after the fact. It also sorts out the wheat from the chaff?so that in this case companies with weak safety profiles don't get within a mile of an oil derrick.

 Funny how a little oil spill can make the value of the tort system a lot more clear to people.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on June 16, 2010 (boomark / email).