BP Chief To Gulf States: Suck It, Losers

 This post made possible by the Patty Dumpling Endowment for Oil Spill Blogging and Bait Shop. 

Are there business courses specifically geared to teaching you to be a corporate dick? If there are, we have a candidate to teach a masters-level class, perhaps titled “Advanced Assholery and Dickishness in a Post-Modern American South.” Class, meet your new guru, John Minge, chairman and president of BP America. Minge is taking dickishness to a new level by trying to back out of paying claims for that teeny tiny little oil ‘spill’ that happened in the Gulf of Mexico a few years back.

Like anyone even remembers it because there was barely any oil at all so we should all move on and forget about it like Republicans who don’t talk about Obamacare anymore because it's working and people like having health care, ok? BENGHAZI!

We see you are not easily distracted. So let’s explore how Minge is padding his resume for the Dickhole Hall of Shame:

BP is trying to get out of the terms of the mass settlement the company entered into back in 2012, when it was still humbled by the disastrous spill.

The fuck, man? Companies can’t take a giant environmental shit in the ocean and then walk away and hope someone else comes along and makes it all better. Especially if said environmental asshole company signed legal agreements that they no longer want to adhere to, because maybe memories have faded and people won’t remember the EIGHTY-SEVEN DAYS that oil spilled into the ocean because we are all idiots. What is BP trying to do?

That settlement BP signed in 2012 requires the company to compensate those who suffered business losses after the spill, as long as they were located within a broad geographic area (stretching all the way to the Tennessee border). BP now claims that this allows recovery to all kinds of businesses that don’t seem at all connected to the spill. It shrewdly offers colorful examples — a five-figure award collected by George Morris, the owner of a high-end shoe store in Sarasota, and an award to an escort service.

Hmmm. We are kinda ok with anybody and everybody along the Gulf getting some compensation from BP. Plus, its reasonable that all kinds of businesses were harmed from the 210 MILLION GALLONS of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Fuck those guys. But Slate goes on to explain logically (and sadly with no swear words) why BP is wrong for being a whiny-ass titty-baby now:

In order to settle disputes, companies routinely agree to pay dubious claims. That’s why BP has gotten nowhere in court. In a decision in March, a federal appeals court held the company to the plain language of the settlement: As Judge Leslie Southwick wrote: “There is nothing fundamentally unreasonable about what BP accepted but now wishes it had not.”

We all make mistakes, BP. Only our mistakes usually involve sleeping with a creepy chick in a bar who WON’T JUST FUCKING LEAVE in the morning, not giant ecological disasters that ruin multiple ecosystems. And we all have to pay for our mistakes, whether through multi-million dollar settlements or a trip to the doctor and a dose of penicillin. When BP signed on for the settlement, there was a business upside:

That’s how it goes with settlements like this — you pay out for some cases where you shouldn’t, but you don’t pay out in other cases where you should. Investors go for it, because, all told, they see a better outcome than years of litigation, appeals, and uncertainty.

All that to say: Stop being such a massive cock, John Minge. Just #PayTheFuckUp. Stop taking business advice from the Stupidest Man on the Internet. 

[ Slate ]

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