Oil Spill Trial Focuses on Damage Estimates

Exactly what is a day at the beach worth?

That was a key question Monday during closing arguments in the multimillion-dollar negligence lawsuit against Attransco, owner of the oil tanker American Trader. The ship spilled up to 400,000 gallons of crude oil in February 1990, closing 15 miles of Orange County beaches and coastline for five weeks.

The final arguments, like the trial itself, focused on the methods of computing damage, how much oil was lost and how much blame Attransco should bear.

Michael Leslie, an attorney hired to help represent California in the case, suggested that the jury award $14.5 million to be divided among the state, Orange County and the cities of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. He also suggested that the jury fine Attransco $7.9 million for damage to aquatic life on behalf of the Regional Water Control Board.

Defense lawyer David E.R. Woolley countered that the amount of oil actually lost was about 208,000 gallons and that the state’s estimate of the damage is based on faulty data. Defense lawyers have argued that the actual damages are about $1.2 million. Woolley said Monday the fine should be about $600,000.

Despite the lawyers’ recitations of formulas and review of conflicting testimony, their closing arguments had light moments.

Leslie told jurors that hours of defense testimony over economic models and graphs were like the smoke used in a recent televised magic show in which an elephant seemed to disappear.

The smoke, Leslie said, was a diversion; the elephant never went anywhere.

“Keep your eye on the elephant,” he said, getting a laugh from jurors.

Citing testimony, Leslie said American Trader Capt. Albert LaWare was negligent in not ascertaining the depth of water at an oil terminal a mile off Huntington Beach. The captain also ran over the anchor, puncturing the ship’s hull, he said. And the scope of the spill was doubled because crew members, contrary to rules, left valves open between storage tanks, allowing crude oil from three tanks to leak out, even though only one tank was damaged.

Woolley responded that LaWare was acting on information from a pilot hired to guide the boat in and could not have known that the area was too shallow. And Attransco immediately owned up to its responsibility and spent nearly $20 million in the initial cleanup, he said.

Woolley spent most of the afternoon, however, disputing Leslie’s figures and attacking the method that the expert witness used in his “excessively large” estimate that 618,000 people were kept from the beaches.

He also argued that some residents likely enjoyed watching the cleanup and so were still able to derive pleasure from the closed beach, and that others likely found other diversions.

“[Those] 618,000 people didn’t sit home drinking their beer and crying because they couldn’t go to the beach,” Woolley said, drawing his own laughs from the jury.

Court adjourned for the day before Woolley finished. Closing arguments are expected to conclude Wednesday morning.

The oil spill, which occurred just after 4 p.m. on Feb. 7, 1990, was the worst to affect Southern California in more than 20 years. The accident killed more than 1,000 birds and disrupted beach-related businesses.

The Attransco trial is the last in a series of legal claims against the owners of the oil, the ship and the oil platform.

So far, BP America--the U.S. subsidiary of British Petroleum--and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund, which owned the oil, have paid $9.1 million for programs to restore and protect wildlife habitats, establish a fish hatchery program in Carlsbad and reimburse public agencies for some of their cleanup costs. That was in addition to $12 million that BP America paid just after the spill to cover cleanup costs and compensate private parties who suffered losses.

In a second settlement, platform owner Golden West Refining Co. paid $4.5 million to the state, Orange County and the cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.