几家欢喜几家愁

Oh no, another large bill

哦，不，又一大笔账单

EVERY oil spill has a silver lining—if you are a lawyer, that is. More than 70 related lawsuits were filed in the two weeks after oil started leaking into the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, most of them class actions that claim damages on behalf of many similar victims. Trial lawyers are dreaming of one of the biggest paydays since they feasted on tobacco litigation. Even more certain are the bumper fees for law firms defending BP, Halliburton and other firms involved. The most notable winner is Kirkland & Ellis, which will represent the British oil giant.
律师总是能从漏油事件中看到希望。4月20日墨西哥湾漏油事件发生后仅两周内，法院就就收到了70多起相关诉讼，其中大都是集体诉讼，旨在为情况相似的受害者索要赔偿金。辩护律师们都在期待一次薪水大丰收，之前他们已经在烟草案中大获其利。更为确定的是，为BP、哈里伯顿公司和其它涉案公司辩护的律师事务所将获得巨额服务费用。其中，最明显的赢家就是克尔克兰德律师事务所，它将为英国石油大亨进行辩护。

No one doubts that the BP lawsuits will dwarf those that followed the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989, not least because the Gulf spill will affect a far larger, more economically significant area. The earlier disaster ultimately cost Exxon Mobil about $4 billion in clean-up and legal payments, much less than had seemed likely at first because a Supreme Court decision in 2008 allowed punitive damages to be slashed from $2.5 billion to $507.5m.
BP案的规模将远远超过埃克森公司瓦尔迪兹漏油事件（1989年于阿拉斯加）以来所有的漏油案件，这一点毋庸置疑，因为与之前的类似事件相比，此次漏油恰恰影响到一个面积更广、经济更为发达的地区。瓦尔迪兹的灾难最终耗费了埃克森美孚公司（埃克森公司和美孚公司于1998年合并）约40亿美元，包括油污清理费用和其它法律规定的费用，这比起初预测的花费要少的多，因为最高法院于2008年决定将惩罚性赔偿金由25亿美元骤减至5.075亿美元。

That reduction should provide grounds for BP to hope that punitive damages will be relatively modest. However, actual damages could run into billions, even before fees. Less comforting is the $75m cap on liability for economic damages under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990. Regardless of what happens to efforts in Congress to raise this cap to $10 billion, this legislation may not constrain tort lawsuits under state or common law, argues Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University. “The point of the OPA was not to limit tort law but to supplement it.” Legal damages could thus be in addition to other compensation that is paid voluntarily to victims by BP and others, an amount that has been estimated at anything from $3 billion to $8 billion.
这种削减让BP有理由期望此次的惩罚性赔偿金将相对适中。但是，姑且不算各项费用，实际的赔偿金就可能高达几十亿美元。而更令人不安的是，《美国1990年油污法案》（OPA）将经济赔偿金的最高限额定位7500万美元。乔治梅森大学的一位经济学家阿历克斯·塔巴洛克认为，无论国会如何努力地将此限额升至100亿美元，该法案（OPA）都不会对州法律或共同法之下的侵权诉讼案件造成限制。“OPA的意义在于补充，而不是限制侵权行为法。”因此，除BP和其它涉案公司自愿向受害者赔偿的款项之外，其它法定赔偿也不容忽视，据估计，该赔偿可高达30亿美元至80亿美元不等。

BP seems certain to be the target of a familiar pincer movement between lawsuits brought by state attorneys-general and similar suits by private litigators. This time the trial lawyers are moving faster than their government counterparts, and even before much of the expected harm that they seek damages for has occurred. This is the result of fierce competition to secure lead litigator status and so gain control of the trial and the lion’s share of the fees. A crucial contest is looming between BP and the trial lawyers over the extent to which various lawsuits will be consolidated, and where the trial will happen. The trial lawyers fancy Louisiana, with its long history of generosity to class-action litigants; BP would prefer oil-friendly Texas.
BP看来肯定将处于腹背受敌的境地——同时受到几个州的总检察长的指控和许多私人律师的类似指控，这种情况之前也曾发生于其它公司身上。而这次，私人辩护律师的行动比政府部门更快，甚至在许多潜在危害尚未出现之前就已经索要赔偿。这是双方激烈竞争——争夺诉讼主体地位，因而获得（某些）审理控制权并分得服务费用的绝大部分——所导致的结果。同时，一场BP和（私人）辩护律师之间的关键性争夺即将展开，即关于各种诉讼的合并程度以及案件审理地点的争夺。辩护律师们希望将地点定在路易斯安那州，因为该州一向对集体诉讼案“格外开恩”，而BP则倾向于与石油关系密切的德克萨斯州。

Litigation over the oil spill is helping to reverse a downward trend in class-action suits against business. The BP case may be just the sort of disaster that tort law exists to address. But the justification is less clear for some other high-profile litigation. Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute, a think-tank that produces an occasional report on the litigation industry, is sceptical of the validity of a current class-action suit that brings together disparate cases alleging that Wal-Mart discriminates against women. He adds that class actions against Toyota are a repeat of similar cases, with a mixed record of success, against other carmakers going back to the 1980s. They follow a familiar pattern: a firm admits to a problem and lawyers then use this as the basis for broader allegations about, for example, self-accelerating cars.
此次漏油案将有助于扭转集体诉讼公司案件数量下降的趋势。也许，正是BP案才使得侵权法有了用武之地。但是相比之下，其他备受瞩目的诉讼案件的辩护理由就显得十分模糊了。曼哈顿研究所（一个不定期针对诉讼行业发表报告的智囊团）的吉姆·科普兰就对当前这宗集体诉讼案——该诉讼将几起迥然不同的却又都声称沃尔玛歧视女性的案件合并——的可行性提出质疑。他又提到，针对丰田的集体诉讼是一种历史的重演——20世纪80年代已出现过控诉其他汽车制造商的集体诉讼案，但是胜诉率并不高。这些集体诉讼遵循一个类似的模式：某公司承认自己的产品有问题，然后律师就利用这一点做为进一步指控的基础，例如，对自行加速汽车的指控。更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

In 2003 tort costs were equivalent to 2.2% of American GDP, compared with 1.7% in Italy, 1.1% in Germany and less than 1% in Japan, France and Britain. That marked a peak: the share of American GDP represented by such litigation costs fell in each of the following five years, thanks in part to restrictions in the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. However, says Mr Copland, the combined effect of the recession lowering GDP and the rash of new lawsuits, ranging from those against investment banks involved in the financial meltdown to the oil-spill cases, means that when the data are collated for this year and 2009 “the downward trend will almost certainly have been reversed.” That is great news for lawyers. And who could begrudge them their good fortune?
2003年，侵权案件的总花费在美国占GDP的2.2%，相比之下，在意大利占1.7%，在德国占1.1%，在日本、法国和英国占不到1%。该数字（2.2%）达到了历史最高点：因为这种侵权案件的花费占美国GDP的比例在接下来的5年中持续下降，这在某种程度上是由《2005年集团诉讼公平法》的种种限制所致。然而，科普兰说，经济萧条，GDP下降，从金融危机中对投资银行的起诉到漏油案件的发生，新的集体诉讼案件不断涌现，各种因素互相影响，只要我们整理对照今年和2009年的数据就会发现“这种下降的趋势，几乎可以肯定地说，已经被逆转了。”这对律师来说可是个好消息，而你也只能够嫉妒他们的好运了。