ABSTRACT

Litigation Litigation is the civilized remedy of last resort for environmental disputes. The litigation process is often costly, slow, and potentially injurious to the reputations of individuals and firms. Litigation over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill is a case in point. In 2009, 20 years after the incident, litigation continued over such things as interest payments on the $507 million in yet-to-be-paid punitive damages. As of 2013, litigation over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill had generated roughly 90 million pages of documents.4