According to a recent Bloomberg News report the U.S. Justice Department is considering filing manslaughter charges in its investigation of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The report played prominently enough in the media on Tuesday to drive BP’s share price down a noticeable amount.
An analysis of industrial disasters by University of Maryland law professor Jane Barrett shows that company managers are very rarely charged in industrial accidents to include bigger disasters than the recent explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which resulted in 11 fatalities.
“If they are large corporate entities, what has happened historically is the company pleads guilty, pays a fine and no individuals are prosecuted," Barrett said in an interview with AOL News. "The bigger the company, the less likely there will be individuals held accountable."
Just six years ago, in 2005, BP’s Texas City refinery exploded resulting in 15 fatalities and more than 170 injuries. BP pleaded guilty and paid more than $130 million in criminal, civil and administrative fines and still no one was charged with any offense.
"How the Justice Department handles this case is going to be important," Barrett said. She has spent two decades prosecuting environmental cases for both the Justice Department and the state of Maryland. "If they are able to prosecute individuals, they'll send a message that a large corporate criminal find won't shield culpable individuals from prosecution."
From both a PR and law standpoint this situation is a disaster for BP. The threat of the government targeting specific individuals in corporations is a PR/law nightmare. Up until recently the courts never charged people for disasters because it was thought that they were simply doing their job to the best of their abilities. That premise is not going over too well in today’s eco-friendly age.
The BP oil spill has been one of the biggest to date as well as one of the most talked about events of the decade. The oil spill injured millions of aquatic life, ruined lives and resulted in the deaths of both people and animals. It is interesting to look at the oil spill from a PR point of view since it is the epitome of a crisis for such a huge corporation. Even with that being the case criminal charges on individuals from companies are usually tough cases to make.
"In a lot of situations, it's hard to find somebody above the level of line employees who has that knowledge that would make them liable," says Steve Solow a former federal prosecutor who previously headed the Justice Department's environmental crimes unit. "Is it right to go after someone just doing their job as well as they could, when the issue is far more complex and broader than what their job presented?"
This will remain to be the question in the case to come and will undoubtedly be the defense for both the company’s PR and legal counsel. If they are charged it will be a landmark case and one of the biggest rulings of our time.
-Alisha Mychele
For more information go to http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/30/will-bp-execs-face-criminal-charges-in-gulf-oil-spill-not-likel/
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