Valdez Victims Spurned: Almost 20 years of legal battle ended in frustration for victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, as the US supreme court reduced an earlier damages award of $2.5 billion to $507 million. The new figure amounts to just $15,000 for each of the plaintiffs, a group of 33,000 commercial fishermen, cannery workers, native Alaskans and others affected by the disaster, called the worst oil spill in US history. In its decision, the five-to-three majority proclaimed the damages awarded earlier were excessive, setting a precedent for how much juries can punish a company for an employee