CORPORATE FINES VERSUS PRIVATE FINES

Today's Waterloo Region Record informs us that "BP to pay $4.5 B over Gulf oil disaster". That seemed to me to be an impressive figure. We all know how evironmentally damaging that blowout was. We also all know that eleven BP workers lost their lives. Finally it's become common knowledge that there was negligence involved beforehand followed by less than stellar honesty to Congress by BP afterwards.

Then I read in the same article that BP made $25.8 billion in profits last year. This settlement with the government amounts to less than 20% of one year's profits for the company. I compare this with a personal award against myself many years ago. The award related to a Libel suit in which the good judge decided I had libelled a teacher. He did this despite eight other parents testifying on my behalf. No one died. The victims according to the parents who testified were their children (and mine). My income was around $30,000 per year. The award was for $604,000 or more than twenty years of my earnings because a judge decided that I hurt a teacher's feelings and or reputation. I had no money for an appeal whereas the teacher and her business owner husband were well off.

So less than 20% of BP's annual income. Add eleven deaths and immeasureable environmental damage versus hurt feelings and allegedly reputation and I should pay greater than twenty years of my salary. Even if the judgement was accurate, which it wasn't, the fine/award was idiotic. The judge was ridiculous, biased and incompetent. These are the kinds of decisions which put the administration of justice into disrepute.