Slippery Issues in ’90 Oil Spill Posed in Court

They remember where they were when they heard the news. It was Feb. 7, 1990, and an oil tanker had run aground off Huntington Beach in a disaster that would spill as much as 400,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil, blackening beaches and killing birds.

The beaches were cleaned up long ago, but for the two attorneys, the hardest part has just begun.

For 7 1/2 years, that ill-fated tanker called American Trader has dominated their professional lives--Sylvia Cano Hale as a deputy attorney general for the state of California, David E. R. Woolley representing the tanker’s owner and operator.

Now, the two attorneys are sparring in a Santa Ana courtroom, where Southern California’s worst oil spill in 20 years is at the center of a high-stakes Orange County Superior Court trial.

In a complex civil suit, state and local governments are seeking $20 million in damages from the tanker’s owner in a trial that could run until December.

It promises to raise significant legal issues about how to put a price tag on an oil spill’s effects--specifically, how to calculate the cost to the public of a lost day at the beach.

For players such as Hale and Woolley, the trial will test years of research, court motions and legal twists and turns.

“It’s been a heck of a lot of hand wringing and a heck of a lot of headaches,” Hale said. “But this case, I think, will really set important law.”

Woolley, who plans to challenge the validity of the state’s method of calculating loss of recreational use, agrees the case will deal with ground-breaking issues.

“The state has exaggerated the measure of damages and the number of people who actually suffered,” he said.

The spill made national news in 1990 when it fouled 15 miles of coastline, killed more than 1,000 birds and closed some popular Orange County beaches for as long as five weeks. But in recent years it has fallen off the public radar screen, particularly after BP America--which owned the oil--and other companies paid a total of $11 million in settlements.

Last week in court, however, the events of that February day were recalled as opening statements and testimony got underway as slides of yellow-suited workers cleaning beaches were projected onto a video screen.

The jury sat facing a chart suspended from the ceiling, showing three views of the tanker.

For those with ties to the spill, the trial is triggering a time warp of sorts, bringing back a flood of facts and memories.

For Hale, the case started with a phone call from Sacramento. It was her boss, briefing her on the oil spill and asking her to take on the legal battle that was sure to ensue. Hale said yes.

“Little did I know what I would be saying yes to,” Hale recently recalled.

Hale left her downtown Los Angeles office and took the freeways toward Huntington Beach. There, crowds of sightseers had gathered on shore to watch the failing ship, but Hale was too busy to join them.

She had to seek out her clients, state Fish and Game wardens, parks employees, and advise them: “We need to start to collect evidence.”

Even as the oil spilled, it was clear that legal hurdles lay ahead.

Woolley got a call that day as well. A Long Beach-based attorney who specializes in maritime and international law, he represents the tanker’s owner and operator, Attransco, formerly known as American Trading Transportation Co.

He remembers navigating the San Diego Freeway and hopping a water taxi to take him straight to the tanker anchored offshore.

Woolley defends the ship’s crew, saying, “These folks don’t want to spill oil. They take their jobs very seriously.”

For both attorneys, the case has been demanding and time-consuming.

Woolley estimates that 50% to 70% of his time has been taken up by the case.

“Seven years of one’s life is a huge span,” he said.

Hale’s son, 5 years old when she was assigned to the American Trader, now is almost 13--”and he knows a lot about oil spills.”

She has worked virtually full time on the spill litigation, which she calls one of the longest environmental cases tackled by the state.

Fees and costs to the state have exceeded $2 million. Woolley, for his part, said: “It’s very difficult for a business company to afford the legal fees for something like this.”

The two attorneys both earned their law degrees from Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley, Hale in 1972 and Woolley in 1973. As undergraduates, both studied history.

But the two have very different backgrounds and demeanors. Woolley is British-born and went to University College in Oxford. His legal work has focused on maritime, environmental and international issues, and he is a partner with Cogswell, Woolley, Nakazawa & Russell in offices close to the harbor in Long Beach. He has taught maritime law at USC.

In questioning the state’s witnesses Thursday, he looked almost professorial, gazing over his glasses, hands thrust in the pockets of his dark gray suit, his queries direct and pointed.

Hale grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and graduated from UCLA. She went to work for the attorney general’s office in 1975 and has focused on environmental law, including oil spills, questions of offshore oil development, water law issues and enforcing prohibitions on importing cars that do not meet smog requirements.

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She is precise and firm in interviews, focused on facts, clearly intense about the case before her.

“I think it’s going to set a value on loss of beach recreation,” she said. People can set value on damage to creatures like sea otters, she said. “But when you can’t go to the beach, what’s that worth?”

She added: “There’s people who’ll say if you can’t go to the beaches, what’s the big deal? . . . But beaches are held in public trust for the public.”

The plaintiffs in the case are the state of California, the county of Orange, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach and other state agencies, including the state Department of Fish and Game.

The governments filed their civil suit in 1991 against several companies that allegedly played a role in the spill. Settlements totaling $7 million with BP America and a petroleum industry fund were announced in 1995, and a $4.15-million settlement was reached in 1996 with offshore terminal operator Golden West Refining Co. Attransco has not settled, leading to the current trial before Judge William McDonald.

Since 1994, Hale and her office have been assisted by a private Los Angeles law firm, Hedges & Caldwell, which represented the city of Torrance in a prominent lawsuit and its 1990 pretrial settlement against Mobil Oil Corp., which centered on problems at the Torrance refinery.

Firm attorney Michael Leslie, who presented the state’s opening statement Tuesday, says that while loss-of-use issues have been present in many environmental cases, this is one of the first cases nationally that has gone to trial.

One of the key issues at stake will be the cost of lost recreation time at several Orange County beaches.

A state expert believes that a conservative value is $15 a day per person, and the expert has put separate costs on loss of surfing and boating opportunities.

Those calculations led the state to seek $12 million in damages representing loss of recreational use. The state is seeking another $8 million in civil liabilities for discharge of oil into water.

While not conceding the case, Woolley says that if the tanker’s owners were to pay damages for loss of beach use, it should be only a portion of what the state is asking, or $6 per person per day. He thinks $1.2 million--one-tenth of the state’s request--is a more reasonable figure for damages.

Woolley said the state is dealing with “utterly hypothetical ideas and damages.” If people cannot go to the beach, they are enterprising enough to find alternatives, he said.

The two sides have provided starkly different views of the spill, what caused it and even how much oil was involved.

A key question promises to be how much was known about ocean depths the day Capt. A. R. La Ware attempted to berth his vessel at an offshore terminal.

The state maintains that the oil tanker’s captain ignored crucial data about depths. But Woolley insists the captain was given incorrect information by a maritime pilot.

The state put the amount of oil spilled at 400,000 gallons. Woolley said new calculations put it at about half that amount, or 208,000 gallons.

But the matter of loss of use promises to be the central question and is expected to attract attention from industry and environmental groups alike.

In Washington, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, the major trade association for the petroleum industry, said loss-of-use issues are drawing industry attention.

“It’s an emerging issue, and it’s a very difficult one to in any way quantify,” said the spokesman, Joseph Lastelic.

Weeks of testimony loom in the trial in Santa Ana. But for two key attorneys, the end of a 7 1/2-year project may be in sight.

“Thanksgiving,” Woolley said, “would be a nice time to finish.”