Exxon Valdez Spill
...oast Guard Regulation requiring two officers on deck but he left again. Negligence meaning an omission or failure to perform ordinary safety procedures for a certain practice. Hazelwood left someone in charge that probably should of not been there. Being the captain of the ship he had a responsibility to his crew and to the company he worked for and by leaving the bridge to Kunkels he failed to do his job. When alerted that there was trouble Hazelwood did not respond immediately. Not to mention that he was acting out of ignorance before the ship took of Hazelwood had been drinking making his decisions questionable. The attorney for the plaintiffs in the 1994 civil case argued that Hazel wood had acted recklessly on the basis of so many acts stating, “everybody makes a mistake but they don’t make three in a row.” Hazelwood even admitted that he neglected his responsibilities by not being on the bridge and when asked by the Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer what caused the accident he said, “you are looking at it.” Knowing that he was not capable and having to be told three different times Cousins took control of the ship. He was eventually blamed for this accident for not properly making the turn in time. He needs to be held accountable to a point that he was left above the bridge while the captain was down below trying to finish some work. You can not take something on if you do not know what you are doing and turning his back on Robert Kagan the helmsman not watching what he was doing proved to be a hazardous mistake. He realized that he did something wrong and proved it when he grabbed the wheel and turned it himself. He later testified on May 16, 1989 that he was incompetent to handle the Exxon Valdez. His actions was the proximate cause of the oil spill. The crew should not be the only one held responsible for this accident Exxon had many roles in this accident .The president of Exxon, Frank Iarossi held a press conference and announced that Exxon accepted the responsibility. I would not say that Exxon is responsible for the accident but I would hold them liable or accountable, for this accident. To hold someone accountable for an action and its outcomes, it has to be shown that the person in question had some obligations or duty toward those affected by the actions, that there was a certain set of conventional expectations on their part, or that the accountable party was bound by existing laws or moral norms (Lizska pg. 1...