Cleaning up: The Story Behind the Biggest Legal Bonanza of Our Time.

• Author: Walker, Jesse

On July 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground, slamming into Alaska's Bligh Reef a few minutes after midnight. More than 11 million gallons of oil seeped into Prince William Sound, disrupting aquatic ecosystems and undercutting the livelihoods of thousands of men and women who make their living from the sea.

On September 16, 1994, an Alaska jury hit the Exxon Corp. with a bill for $5 billion. This award was not compensation for the damage the spill had done: The jury had already told Exxon to deliver $286.7 million to commercial and subsistence fishermen injured by the accident. Nor was it a cleanup bill: The company had been sinking money into that project for years, at great expense (and to little effect). Nor was it a statutory fine: This was a civil case, separate from efforts of environmental regulators (more on those later). The award was for punitive damages, above and beyond the costs Exxon had imposed on others; it was a punishment and nothing more. It was the largest such penalty in legal history.

Exxon has appealed the verdict, and the award may be reduced. Either way, some lawyers are going to become very, very rich. I mention this not to engage in the familiar game of shyster-bashing but to raise a point. Most people did not immediately think of their bank accounts when they heard that the Valdez had run aground. That, I suppose, is the difference between attorneys and the rest of us. While we were watching footage of oil-soaked waterfowl, a flock of lawyers was already looking for clients on whose behalf they could sue Exxon. Some were interested in justice; some weren't. All were interested in cashing in, as were the fishing operations, native tribes, and municipalities who hired them.

Today, that interest may seem self-evident, but, as David Lebedoff reminds us in his engrossing Cleaning Up, in 1989 it wasn't. The Exxon case seemed like a simple morality play. On one side, there was a soulless corporation, a company so irresponsible, so starved for profits, that it let a drunk pilot its rig. On the other side, there were helpless birds and cuddly otters. It was big business against the earth, selfishness against the commonweal, evil against good. Or so we were told. The greatest virtue of Cleaning Up is that it clears away those old cliches and shows the competing interest groups at play.

By extension, the book demystifies the whole idea of "environmentalism," of a purely moral movement divorced from self-interest, political influence, and other signs of a social context. In grade school, many of us learned about the Lorax, the selfless Dr. Seuss character who stood up to the developers and spoke for the trees. Not once did our teachers mention that the Lorax charged a fat...