ms. gibbons, 1 years ago i was up in prince william sound, right after the spill and saw it. never forget it, as long as i live and i, too, share your skepticism of the promises made on the corporate side and know we need hava court system and a congress that is sensitive to the need to think, as you say, and be thoughtful in wait we approach some of these environmental issues. to the other three witnesses i apologize for stepping out for a moment, but i have read your testimony, and i thank you for being here and thank you for your service to our country. we all appreciate it very much. i'd like to note by way of a question two things that struck me recently. one is the fact we all know so many of our great veterans of world war ii are passing on. time is taking its toll. i? one, joe flynn, part of the d-day invasion, battle of the bulge. great oldful oh. so proud of his service in world war ii and i don't question for a minute what tom broke coe said, the greatest generation. they served for the duration when they decided to enlist in our armed forces. but there was also an

ms. gibbons, i'm always interested in your case not only because of the horrible wrong that happened there, but actually a minnesota law fi represented the fishermen, the plaintiffs in the case. i'm somewhat familiar, actually read a book on it called "cleaning up" about the case of how long it took and those kinds of thing. what do you think we can learn from what happened? the delay, that 8,000 of the plaintiffs died before getting any of the awards, because of the delay in at case and as you meioned, the verdi was $5 billion slashed down to $500 million. what are the lessons we can learn in terms of the supreme court and also what we should be doing now with the oil spilin the gulf. >> have you got a couple weeks? >> i have exactly 19 seconds. no ihin you can -- go a little into my time,he chairman will allow. >> 15 seconds. >> well, one of theig problems was after 20 years everything was out of context. the strategy that the lawyers had for their clients was out of context. the climate of the countrhad changed. one of the things that i think concernme the most is over that time the s.