Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to appeal E. Jean Carroll $5 million verdict

[druidity33]

48. The internet tells me...

that Exxon paid out roughly 3 billion for the disaster that was Valdez. Wikipedia has the deets:

Exxon appealed again. On May 23, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied ExxonMobil's request for a third hearing and let stand its ruling that Exxon owed $2.5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.[49] On February 27, 2008, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. Justice Samuel Alito, who at the time owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Exxon stock, recused himself from the case.[50] In a decision issued June 25, 2008, written by Justice David Souter, the court vacated the $2.5 billion award and remanded the case back to the lower court, finding that the damages were excessive with respect to maritime common law. Exxon's actions were deemed "worse than negligent but less than malicious."[51] The punitive damages were further reduced to an amount of $507.5 million.[52] The Court's ruling was that maritime punitive damages should not exceed the compensatory damages,[52] supported by a precedent dating from 1818.[citation needed] Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy has decried the ruling as "another in a line of cases where this Supreme Court has misconstrued congressional intent to benefit large corporations."[53]

Exxon's official position was that punitive damages greater than $25 million were not justified because the spill resulted from an accident, and because Exxon spent an estimated $2 billion cleaning up the spill and a further $1 billion to settle related civil and criminal charges. Attorneys for the plaintiffs contended that Exxon bore responsibility for the accident because the company "put a drunk in charge of a tanker in Prince William Sound."[54] Exxon recovered a significant portion of clean-up and legal expenses through insurance claims associated with the grounding of Exxon Valdez.[55][56]

As of December 15, 2009, Exxon had paid the entire $507.5 million in punitive damages, including lawsuit costs, plus interest, which were further distributed to thousands of plaintiffs.[57] This amount was one-tenth of the original punitive damages, Exxon remained hugely profitable, the process of payment was drawn out over decades, and long term damage continues and is not funded by Exxon. Hence, the Exxon spill is often cited as shorthand for corporate responsibility for societal damage not being enforced adequately.[58]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill