Eric,
May I say, in my liberal sort of way, that I hope that one of you does this and gets fat on it AND that there is something that bothers me about this. In my ethical world, the boundary of a tort seems to lie between those of us who profited more from the presence of the oil company than we lost from the failure of the well. So, say, if you live in Pensacola in the midst of an oil boom that goes suddenly bust because of an oil spill it seems to me that you are complicit in your own problems and ought to sue yourself and not bother the rest of us. Notice that there is an odd sort of socialism operating here. These folks will sue, the price of oil will go up, and the rest of us will pay for their pain. I don’t mind sharing the pain; I just don’t like pretending it isn’t socialism. I am a bleeding heart liberal and that is what we do best … share pain. (}:|)But, when we BHL’s share pain, the lawyers don’t get 60 percent. Nick From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2010 5:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] ABM in court? Hey all, Pensacola News Journal is running an article about the tourism industry gearing up to sue BP over the spill. One of the important points to argue, apparently, is that proximity to the spill should not be a crucial factor in eligibility to sue - tourists expectations of the damage hurt tourism across gulf, regardless of actual conditions. But with tourism down everywhere, they can't just compare with years past. Thus: "To that end, the firms plan to hire university experts for economic modeling — that is, building sophisticated computer programs that will use information about businesses and their location to determine how the spill affected their bottom lines." The lawyers are looking to find people to do the modeling... seemed like a good prospect for an ambitious modeler or three. Eric P.S. Full article: http://www.pnj.com/article/20100905/NEWS01/9050314/1006/RSS01
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