General Discussion

Rather snarky of you to accuse me of an "error" when you are relying on a completely different case decided years and years before the punitive damages litigation that was the subject of my post. And then you compound your error by conflating the amount of a verdict and the amount of a premium on an appeal bond. I never said that Exxon paid "only $90 million" (I assume you meant $60 million). I said they paid a $60 million premium to get a $5 billion bond. I didn't address the amount of the verdict they ultimately paid -- or had the surety pay paid out out of the collateral that Exxon almost certainly had to put up to get the bond. The sureties made $60 million. Nothing more. The plaintiffs got the amount of the verdict -- what they were entitled to without regard to whether there was a bond or the cost to Exxon for the bond

The bond clearly cost Exxon $60 million to cover a worst case payout of $5 billion -- a payout for which the sureties undoubtedly had obtained collateral from Exxon and that Exxon would have to make up to the sureties out of that collateral if and when he failed to win a complete reversal. Indeed, for all I know, having had the verdict reduced from $5billion to $500,000, Exxon may have decided not to rely on the bond but to pay out the $500,000, thereby unencumbering $4.5 billion that it had provided to collateralize the potential worst case verdict. But he would still be out $60 million that he paid over and above any verdict to avoid having to pay the verdict before his appeal was decided. Presumably, Exxon could gone without a bond -- as one of the cases I cited but you didn't read -- suggests. If Exxon had sufficient assets to collateraralize a $5 billion bond, it presumably had sufficient assets to forego the bond and pay the verdict without spending an additional $60 million. But doing so probably would have meant liquidating some nonliquid assets and, would have resulted in significant costs to Exxon when it sought to claw back the $4.5 billion it would have paid out that, upon appeal, it turns out it didn't owe.

Let me just ask directly: what do you think Chubb is charging Trump as a premium for the bond? Twenty percent of the $91 million? Ten percent of the $91 million? Or less that 2 percent of the $91 million.