We're sorry to rain on the parade of the ten contract workers who won a $100 million verdict against energy company BP in a Galveston federal district court on Friday, but the chances of that verdict surviving intact are pretty slim. That's because all but $300,000 of that amount represents punitive damages. If you compute the ratio of punitive to actual damages, you get 333 to 1, which is not a ratio that many courts will look favorably on. In addition, Texas caps punitive damages in most cases at $200,000 per plaintiff.

Still, that verdict should get the attention of BP, which faces similar claims by an additional 133 workers. All claim to have been injured by a toxic chemical release at BP's troubled Texas City oil refinery in 2007. Click here for an account of the verdict by the Houston Chronicle.

We talked on Monday to plaintiffs lawyer Anthony Buzbee of Galveston's Buzbee Law Firm, who represents the 10 workers who won the verdict, as well as the other 133. "The whole purpose of the case was to punish BP," said Buzbee. "I was very upfront [with the jury] that this was a punitive damages case." He admits that his clients' injuries were minor: All were released from the hospital the same day they were admitted. But, he contended, BP has a history of safety violations at this plant that it refuses to remedy. The Texas City refinery is the same facility where 15 workers were killed in a 2005 explosion, leading the company to pay $2 billion in private damages and a $50 million criminal fine (see third item). Federal and state regulators, he contended, are unwilling or unable to force the company to improve the safety of its working conditions. (The company is fighting an $87 million fine imposed this year by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)

Read more at
http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/digestTAL.jsp?id=1202437108572&BPs__Million_Personal_Injury_Verdict_Nearly_All_Punitives

Five years after a faulty transmission caused a pickup truck to pop into gear, running over and killing a longshoreman in the Port of Los Angeles, Chrysler has agreed to a $24 million settlement with the victim's Long Beach family. Richard Mraz, 38, was working at the APL yard on Terminal Island when a 1994 Dodge Dakota he had been driving suddenly jumped into reverse after he had exited it to help a co-worker, knocking him to the ground and causing a fatal head injury.

He died several days later, leaving behind a wife and three kids. In 2007, a jury found Chrysler liable in the death, saying the automaker knew of the transmission problem as early as 2000, but failed to adequately notify owners that the trucks could suddenly pop into reverse even after being placed in the "park" position. The jury awarded Mraz's family $55 million, but during the ensuing appeals and years of litigation, Chrysler sank into bankruptcy, putting the judgment in question.

Read more at
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13545539