WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a full committee hearing today titled Deepwater Horizon Tragedy: Holding Responsible Parties Accountable.

Witness List:

Mrs. Shelley Anderson, Midfield, Texas

Mrs. Natalie Roshto, Liberty, Mississippi

Dr. Tom Galligan, President and Professor of Humanities, Colby-Sawyer College

Mr. Fred McCallister, Vice President, Allegiance Capitol Corporation

Key Quotations from Today’s Hearing: 

“Employers whose negligence causes an employee’s or anyone else’s death should be held fully accountable for the pain and suffering they cause regardless of where their death takes place. Companies that do harm should not be able to hide behind statutes from 1851 to avoid paying for the harm they have caused. And the courts should have the power to make an example of a company that disregards its workers’ safety. Transocean’s cold and calculated effort to avoid taking full responsibility for their actions – or inaction – shines a bright light on a serious problem – a lack of accountability and equal treatment under the law. We cannot allow that to continue.”

Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV

“We want you to prevent wives and families from ever being in our shoes. Just as I am trying to teach my five year old responsible behavior, we want to promote responsible behavior on the rigs. We may not be special; but we are survivors of our husband’s and father’s life and we want to be treated like any other survivor.”

Mrs. Shelley Anderson, Midfield, Texas 

“I want to make sure that Congress acts quickly to change current law to ensure that all victims of maritime disasters are treated equally. It should make no difference in the eyes of the law where a loved one is killed because of the wrongful acts of another. It should also make no difference whether the person killed worked as a seamen, contractor, or was simply a passenger. The law should treat everyone the same.”

Mrs. Natalie Roshto, Liberty, Mississippi

“The failure to allow recovery of loss of society damages in seaman and high seas maritime wrongful death cases…is unjust, dated, inconsistent, and out of alignment with current values…The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico provides a sad but necessary opportunity for our nation to reconsider our law and make it more just in the aftermath of this disaster.”

Dr. Tom Galligan, President and Professor of Humanities, Colby-Sawyer College 

“Reduced to practical terms, should the well stop flowing oil into the Gulf today, and should the vast amounts of oil not re-suspend itself, and if we immediately deployed the six of the world’s largest oil recovery and removal vessels, the effort of removing the surface oil from the Gulf would take six years.”

Mr. Fred McCallister, Vice President, Allegiance Capitol Corporation

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