BP Oil Spill Highlights Need for Strong Civil Justice System

The American Association for Justice released a report entitled "Hazardous to Your Health: How the Civil Justice System Holds Corporate Polluters Accountable." The report details how corporations run roughshod over the environment and how the civil justice system is the only institution that holds them accountable.

In discussing the report on the Huffington Post, AAJ’s immediate past-president,Anthony Tarricone, explained:

Unfortunately, it is only through disaster or tragedy when people begin to understand why a strong civil justice system is so necessary. Whether it is runaway Toyota cars, collapsing mines, the BP oil rig blowout, or the worst financial crisis in a generation, all of these underscore why a legal system that holds wrongdoers accountable is critical to providing Americans justice.

Tarricone went on to explain that:

When the environmental movement was born in the 1960s and 1970s, a slew of laws were passed to protect the outdoors. But lax enforcement left corporations little incentive to comply. Ultimately, trial attorneys sought justice for communities destroyed by corporate polluters.

AAJ’s new president, Gibson Vance, recently discussed the report on CNN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96ui3G4FVg

This report–coupled with the recent BP disaster–highlights why Americans need to constantly resist efforts to curtail the civil justice system. Our civil justice system–made up of the courts and and attorneys–often is the only defense we have to letting corporations run rampant in the interest of profits.