BP Products North America must pay 100 million U.S. dollars to 10 workers exposed to toxic fumes while working at its Texas City refinery, a federal jury ruled on Friday.
Apart from punitive damages, the jury also awarded these contract workers between 5,918 dollars and 244,386 dollars as actual damages for
medical expenses, mental pain and lost income.
The toxic substance incident occurred in April 2007.
These 10 cases were the first of more than 100 claims from the same incident to go to trial in the federal court at Galveston, Texas.
In a brief statement, BP said that it was "shocked and outraged" by the verdict and that it would appeal.
"We believe the evidence showed that BP did not cause harm to anyone on April 19, 2007," the online statement read. "The verdict, and punitive
damages award in particular, is utterly unjustified, improper and unsupportable."
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated into the April 2007 incident, but reported no evidence linking the toxic leak to the refinery.
BP claimed that the toxic fumes had come from the outside. But lawyers representing the sickened workers argued that the odor had come from a sulphur recovery unit inside the plant.
The sickened workers accused BP of negligence in maintaining equipment and for not having sufficient monitoring and warning systems in place to detect a release of toxic substances.
BP's safety record has been under scrutiny since March 2005, when an explosion at the same refinery killed 15 people and injured 170. The
explosion was the worst U.S. industrial accident since 1990.