Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc could publish an insider's guide to courthouses across America, so often does the company and its subsidiaries find themselves in them.

They get prosecuted. They get sued. They get rapped by regulators. If it's not BP oil spilling in Alaska, it's a BP refinery exploding in Texas and claiming 15 lives.

Trying to corner the propane market landed the company in trouble in Illinois. So did dumping diesel fuel in a New Zealand stream, sending pollutants into Lake Michigan, and ditching hazardous waste on Alaska's North Slope. Leaks, spills and toxic fumes have slipped out of BP operations from Virginia to California.

BP and its offspring always promise to do better, even while danger signs at another operation go unheeded. With a market capitalization of $229 billion, the BP family, based in London, pays millions of dollars in fines and spends billions to clean up and repair. Then more goo, more gas somehow escape from yet another faulty plant or pipeline.

Recalling that history and how BP's chronic disregard for safety led to the deadly explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery in 2005, families of those killed in the blast and survivors have done what few crime victims have attempted.

They persuaded the sentencing judge to hold on just one minute before going along with a plea bargain so sweet you could wrap it in cellophane, plunk it in a dish and offer it to house guests.

Light Sentence

For ignoring obvious problems and mishaps at the refinery, defying environmental rules, putting workers in trailers dangerously close to a faulty vent system and triggering a preventable lethal explosion, BP would pay a $50 million fine and go on probation for three years.

Not only is the fine shamefully light, the plea agreement waives the usual, indeed, the mandatory, pre-sentence investigation. Such an investigation would have uncovered BP's law-breaking and its broken promises to go straight.

The company and the government disclosed to the judge only two prior incidents. The victims' lawyers found more than 30 cases since 1985 in which BP was fined, most of them within the past decade.

``You see these same violations over and over and over again,'' says David Perry, a Corpus Christi, Texas, lawyer representing Texas City victims who settled their cases. Perry says he is representing them in the criminal case for free.

Toxic Waste

If the victims hadn't stepped in, the judge contemplating punishment for the Texas City explosion wouldn't have been told about all those times that BP and its offshoots spilled, leaked, dumped or emitted substances it wasn't supposed to. She couldn't be told of the times BP ignored rules, regulations or laws, or when it endangered their workers and the public, or dirtied the water, the air or the soil.

The U.S. Justice Department boasts that the agreement is really, really tough. It's the first time it has prosecuted a company under a 1990 provision enacted after the Union Carbide explosion in Bhopal, India (an odd point on which to brag). The plea deal includes the highest fine ever in a Clean Air Act case, the most the law allows, prosecutors say.

That last point depends on how you count the Texas plant's profits and how many years you include. Counting as the victims do, the fine could reach $2 billion.

Whatever the sum, none would go to the victims, some 2,800 of whom have settled civil cases. Another 1,200 claims are pending. BP has announced it exhausted the $1.6 billion it set aside to settle Texas City claims.

Repairing the Damage

The company points out that it is spending $1 billion to fix the Texas City refinery, which has been shut down, and promised to spend $4 billion more there and at four other U.S. plants.

And as part of the plea agreement, BP says it will meet federal occupational safety standards and state environmental rules. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP $21 million, a record for that agency.

Asked to respond to the victims' claims, BP spokesman Neil Chapman e-mailed a statement and declined further comment.

The statement lauds the company's post-explosion conduct, the compensation paid victims, the cooperation with authorities, the money spent on refurbishing and the revenue lost while the refinery runs at half-capacity to accomplish the fixes.

``We are working to become an industry leader in process safety management and performance,'' the statement says.

But BP's ``rap sheet,'' as Perry puts it, shows the company is better at promising than promise-keeping. Already it has broken its agreement with OSHA, he says.

Reject or Rewrite

This week the victims asked U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal to either reject the plea deal outright or to appoint a monitor to ensure BP obeys the law as part of the probation.

So far they've persuaded her to postpone sentencing and consider BP conduct that the prosecution hadn't disclosed.

That's an extraordinary accomplishment for crime victims, made possible by the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004.

``A lot of people assume the prosecutor represents their interest, but the prosecutor represents the government,'' says Susan Howley, public policy director for the National Center for Victims of Crime.

In this case, the victims are doing what the prosecutors should have done.

``A lot of what the victims' rights movement has been about is making government more accountable, and particularly in the area of plea bargains,'' says Douglas Beloof, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, based at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.

BP's prosecutors either failed to learn or neglected to disclose this company's extensive history of law-breaking and failed to use this catastrophe to force change in a corporate culture that has led to so many deaths, pollution and disregard for the law.

Instead of bragging about the plea deal, the Justice Department should be ashamed of it.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 21, 2007 00:18 EST