Estimating Environmental Liability: Quantifying the Unknown

Abstract

In 1990, a Missouri jury awarded $16.2 million in damages to a family that sued Georgia-Pacific and Temple Industries for health effects suffered from particleboard in their home. In 1992, Boeing agreed to pay more than $500,000 to settle a suit filed by a former employee who claimed that his leukemia was caused by exposure to electromagnetic radiation. There are now about 500.000 known hazardous waste sites in the United States. which will cost at least $1.7 trillion to remediate (according to the EPA). In September 1994, an Alaskan jury imposed the largest punitive five in history on Exxon—$5 billion in damages to be shared by over 34,000 Alaskans—for its 1989 tanker spill of 11 million gallons of crude oil off the coast of Alaska. This extraordinary sum is on top of the more than $3.5 billion in fines, damages, and cleanup costs already paid by Exxon.