Friday, August 30, 2013
The Florida Today, Melbourne: Gulf Coast residents, victimized in 2010 by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, are being victimized again, this time by trial lawyers exploiting a legal system ill-equipped to handle such calamities.
What started out just months after the spill as a sensible system to compensate injured people and businesses has turned into a fiasco. Some lawyers are already lined up to share in a jackpot of up to $600 million in fees. Others are busy ginning up claims, many of dubious merit. Businesses with no legitimate damages are collecting money. There are so many allegations of conflicts of interest that a former FBI director has been named to investigate.
Two months after British Petroleum’s oil rig exploded — killing 11 men and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico — the oil giant, under pressure from the White House and stockholders, waived a $75 million cap on damages set by U.S. law, and vowed to set aside $20 billion to compensate victims.
Mediator
Kenneth Feinberg, a mediator best known for successfully running the 9/11 victims’ compensation fund, was put in charge. In a year and a half, he had paid out $6.4 billion to 220,000 individuals.
A group of trial lawyers, who had filed thousands of claims against BP and were seeking a share of the billions, wanted no part of Feinberg’s operation. They reached their own deal with BP. Feinberg closed up shop. And the shenanigans began.