ThePopTort

There Will Be Oil, and Oil, and Oil

When did oil misfortunes become so popular? Not that this topic hasn’t always been timeless and dramatic. (Like, it’s not every 1927 Upton Sinclair novel - the one called Oil! - so easily lends itself to being turned into an Oscar-winning film 80 years later.  And it’s not every environmental catastrophe - the one created by oil - that’s devastating enough to lure Mos Def, Lenny Kravitz, the Preservation Hall Band, Trombone Shorty, and Tim Robbins simultaneously into the studio! See below.)

But a quick perusal of the news this week makes clear that misfortunes (to put it mildly) created by “oil” are all the rage, these days. Here’s our highlight reel:

On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department “reached a $1.4 billion settlement ... with Transocean Ltd., the owner of the drilling rig that sank after an explosion killed 11 workers and spawned the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.” Notes the Associated Press, “BP PLC, which leased the rig from Transocean, already has agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties and plead guilty to manslaughter and other criminal charges related to the spill. The deal with BP doesn't resolve the federal government's civil claims against the London-based oil company.” And, “Last month, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans gave final approval to a class-action settlement agreement between BP and a team of private plaintiffs' attorneys. BP estimates it will pay about $7.8 billion to resolve these claims, but the settlement isn't capped. Barbier also is set to preside over a trial designed to identify the causes of BP's deadly well blowout and assign percentages of fault to the companies involved. The first phase of the trial is scheduled to start Feb. 25.”

Also yesterday, “The House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition called on the Interior Department and the Coast Guard to jointly investigate the New Year's Eve grounding of the Shell drilling vessel Kulluk on a remote Gulf of Alaska island, and a previous incident connected to Arctic offshore drilling operations in 2012.”  Writes AP,

"The recent grounding of Shell's Kulluk oil rig amplifies the risks of drilling in the Arctic," they said in a joint statement. "This is the latest in a series of alarming blunders, including the near-grounding of another of Shell's Arctic drilling rigs, the 47-year-old Noble Discoverer, in Dutch Harbor and the failure of its blowout containment dome, the Arctic Challenger, in lake-like conditions."

And speaking of the Associated Press, the newswire just got hold of a Department of Transportation report to Congress (set to be released next week), which finds that 16 pipeline spills “caused by flooding and riverbed erosion dumped 2.4 million gallons of crude oil and other hazardous liquids into U.S. waterways over the past two decades. … Of the 2.4 million gallons of oil, gasoline, propane and other hazardous liquids released, less than 300,000 gallons was recovered,” threatening drinking water supplies.

The massive August 6 Chevron refinery fire in Richmond California (San Francisco’s East Bay) may have been made worse by company firefighters who may have punctured a pipe – a “40-year-old pipe had already been weakened by the heavy sulfur content of the crude oil being pumped through it.” Meanwhile, reports the New York Times, many area residents are furious about,

Chevron’s choice of metal to replace a 5-foot-long, 8-inch carbon-steel pipe that became corroded and sprang a leak in August. The resulting fire sent plumes of black smoke into the air, spewing emissions of sulfur dioxide, as the authorities warned Richmond residents to stay indoors. Thousands went to emergency rooms with various health complaints. Chevron says it will compensate residents with valid claims for medical and property expenses, although it has not said how many of the 23,700 claims it has received will qualify.

And there are more problems in the Gulf of Mexico.  Check out this incredible story:

An oil company admitted Thursday that coffee filters were used to doctor water samples and cover up the fact that it was dumping oil and grease into the Gulf of Mexico on its platform 175 miles south of New Orleans.

W&T Offshore pleaded guilty to a felony and a misdemeanor and agreed to pay $700,000 in fines and $300,000 for community service. W&T, which is based in Texas, announced last month that it would plead guilty to tampering with water samples from its Ewing Banks Block 910 platform and illegally discharging into the Gulf. The guilty plea also included additional details about the company’s crimes.

Those details included the fact that W&T’s contractors used coffee filters to clean the water samples before submitting them to regulators. Also, the company admitted that when they spilled some oil in November 2009, they not only failed to report it to the Coast Guard, but sprayed the oil into the Gulf and then hired a company that worked for three days to clean the platform to make it look like there never was a spill.

Inspectors from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still found oil staining on the platform deck and visible sheen in the water, all of which W&T failed to report as required.

Take it away, guys:

BP’s Criminal Vessels

Anyone following legal developments surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion and spill knows how those responsible have used every maneuver in the book to try to duck blame.  By categorizing the oil rig as a “vessel,” they have tried skirt all kinds of responsibility. For example, on June 3 2010, we wrote,

In an legal maneuver the U.S. Justice Department yesterday called “simply unconscionable,” Transocean has asked a federal judge to apply a 159-year-old law to cap its liability at $27 million – essentially the costs of the sunken rig. AP reports, “If successful, Transocean Ltd. would be left with as much as $533 million in insurance money [which is] almost enough to cover the revenue the company was expecting from a three-year contract with BP PLC.”

Transocean had pulled out of its pocket the Limitation of Liability Act, a primeval law that allows vessel owners to limit their liability to the post-voyage value of the vessel - even though this law was never intended to limit a company’s liability for death and injury to workers. Nine of the 11 workers killed in the explosion worked for Transocean.

Keith Jones, whose 28-year-old son Gordon was one of those killed that day (see Keith below) has been on a painful quest to try to change two other archaic laws, the Death on the High Seas Act and Jones Act, both of which cover deaths on the high seas and both of which severely limit compensation to families of those killed. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Keith Jones and others, these laws (on the books since 1920) were almost amended in Congress. But at the end of 2010, U.S. Sen. James DeMint, (R-S.C.), blocked the Senate from voting on it as a gift to the cruise line and shipping industries, which were heavily lobbying against the families’ interests.

But now, this vessel characterization has come back to bite them, big time.  BP has said it will plead guilty to 11 manslaughter charges for these deaths.  Corporate manslaughter is pretty rare but turns out, less rare when vessels are involved!  That’s thanks to another strange maritime law called the Seaman’s Manslaughter Statute. As described by University of Michigan law professor David Uhlmann, formerly of the Environmental Crimes Section at DOJ, who spoke to the Corporate Crime Reporter last year, the Seaman’s Manslaughter Statute, “[is] a very old statute, which predates the environmental laws that were violated in this case.… Under the Seaman’s Manslaughter Statute, it is a crime if a worker dies aboard a vessel because of negligence or inattention to duties by the master of the vessel or the owner of the vessel. …It’s a felony violation that could result in up to ten years in prison and significant fines.”

Incredible that it took this long for these 11 families to get some kind of justice. But as satisfying as this may be, it’s shameful that families are still victimized by these rest of these statutes. 

UPDATE: Attorney General Eric Holder announced that "BP has agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal counts, including manslaughter, and will pay $4 billion over five years in a settlement.... [A] separate 23-count criminal indictment — including charges of seaman’s and involuntary manslaughter — against the two top-ranking BP supervisors on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig where a blowout occurred April 20, 2010, sinking the rig and killing 11 workers."

 

Weekend Update, PopTort Edition

Yeah, I know it’s technically not yet the weekend.  But last night SNL included Weekend Update on the show’s Thursday night Election Special!  At least this is Friday, which even The Weather Channel considers part of it’s weekend forecast.  I’ve now fully talked convinced myself of the appropriateness of a PopTort Friday Weekend Update.  So here goes - just a few updates on some of our favorite stories.

First, concussions and football.  (See some our earlier coverage here, here.) The New York Times has a frightening front page story today about how the NFL seems to care more about “how much white can show on a player’s socks” than whether its players’ brains are being protected by adequate helmets.  Not that we’re sure whether any helmet can do that.  But clearly, more can be done. 

Yet there’s some corrupting influences at play.  First, NFL rules say only that helmets must be certified by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or Nocsae, whose “standards do not necessarily align with testing designed to simulate the collisions associated with concussions. This discrepancy, some observers say, could be likened to someone judging a modern car’s safety based only on its seat belts, with no extra credit given for models that also have air bags.”  Not surprising given that Nocsae’s governing body is dominated by helmet manufacturers.  Plus, there’s also the corrupting influence of the NFL’s deal with one of those manufacturers - Riddell - which makes the official NFL helmet at least until 2014.

Moving on to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and accompanying environmental disaster, which we have covered for a bit, we continue to ask this question: As bad as BP’s conduct has been, is there a more despicable creature in all this than Transocean – the oil rig owner? 

We told you in 2010,

In an legal maneuver the U.S. Justice Department yesterday called simply unconscionable,” Transocean has asked a federal judge to apply a 159-year-old law to cap its liability at $27 million – essentially the costs of the sunken rig.  AP reports, “If successful, Transocean Ltd. would be left with as much as $533 million in insurance money [which is] almost enough to cover the revenue the company was expecting from a three-year contract with BP PLC.” 

Moving forward to now, the company recently won a federal court ruling that the company “is not liable for oil discharged below the surface of the water, effectively shielding it from billions of dollars of fines for environmental and economic damage to the Gulf Coast.”  On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department and BP filed an appeal.  Writes the Houston Chronicle,

While the filings with the 5th Circuit this week don't detail the legal issues, the Justice Department argued in the past that Transocean should be held liable for oil spilled under the water because it was an owner and operator of the drilling rig involved in the accident.

Finally, one of the most important civil justice issues today is the need to protect the independence of state judiciaries.  Many state judges are elected, and national groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been dumping huge amounts of money into otherwise obscure judicial races, seeking to throw off the bench consumer-friendly judges, replacing them with judges who will answer to these corporate groups.  In many states, these elections are non-partisan but voters often do not notice these races on otherwise partisan ballots.  So here’s a wonderful Public Service Announcement about how voters can find these judicial races in non-partisan elections, and vote – courtesy of the West Wing!

It’s a Baldwin Kind of Day

Of all the many lawsuits surrounding the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which killed 11 and was a subsequent environmental and health disaster, the weirdest has to be this one: Stephen Baldwin of the famous acting Baldwin brothers and recent star of I'm a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here!, has sued Kevin Costner, currently starring in the History’s channel’s blockbuster show, Hatfields and McCoys, about one of the most violent family feuds in U.S. history. 

Baldwin is alleging that Kevin “I probably know more about oil spills than almost anyone in the world” Costner and his friend tricked him into selling his shares of a company (for far less than they were worth), which marketed oil cleanup devices to BP, unaware that BP had placed a $52 million order for it (and then never used it.)

According to testimony yesterday, “Stephen Baldwin threatened to feed personal information about Kevin Costner to The New York Times if they couldn’t resolve their business dispute.”  Not a great way to express one's frustration, but far better than shooting a guy in the back.  (See clip below.)

Writes the Hollywood Reporter, “Baldwin says his primary motivation wasn't money but rather the impact of the technology itself, and that even though he was involved in bankruptcy proceedings, he would have invested more. ‘I could have asked my big brother,’ he said, referring to fellow actor Alec Baldwin.”

Poor Alec.  His name sure get's thrown around a lot these days, especially since it's (coincidently) awfully similar to the tainted organization ALEC, which we cover often at ThePopTort – most recently Monday.  See today’s Newark Star Ledger editorial imploring all corporate ALEC members to dump it like Johnson & Johnson just did.

The organization Republic Report, a project of United Republic, has created a spoof Tumblr site in response to a new attempt by Grover Norquist and his corporate buddies to try to counter the anti-ALEC waive, with “I Stand With ALEC.”  Incredibly, it took Norquist about two months to get this site going. On the other hand, the spoof site is called, I Stand with Alec, not ALEC.”  I won’t try to explain it – just go there.  And if you are tweeting about this, use the hash tag, #istandwithalec.  It’s Norquist’s, but the anti-ALEC tweeters have already pretty much taken it over.

The Newest Energy Worker Hazard - Highway Crashes

This week, the House is set to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – i.e., defense reauthorization for 2013.  There’s no shortage of controversy about this bill (indefinite military detentions anyone?) but provisions that would gut health and safety protections for workers at Department of Energy weapons sites clearly isn’t getting the same kind of attention.  

That's not unusual.  Except for coverage of the occasional national catastrophe, worker safety in this country’s ultra-hazardous energy industry isn't something to which enough people pay attention.  So we’ll thank the New York Times today for its enormous front page story about oil and gas industry workers. As dangerous as the work itself is, workers – many of whom are not unionized - are being killed in new ways you can’t even believe.  Specifically:

Over the past decade, more than 300 oil and gas workers … were killed in highway crashes, the largest cause of fatalities in the industry. Many of these deaths were due in part to oil field exemptions from highway safety rules that allow truckers to work longer hours than drivers in most other industries, according to safety and health experts.

Many oil field truckers say that while these exemptions help them earn more money, they are routinely used to pressure workers into driving after shifts that are 20 hours or longer.

And the problem is only getting worse.

According to federal officials, more than 200,000 new oil and gas wells will be drilled nationwide over the next decade. And the drilling technique used at more than 90 percent of these wells, known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, leads to far more trucks on the road — roughly 500 to 1,500 truck trips per well — than traditional drilling, partly because fracking requires millions of gallons of water per well.

The new drilling has been an economic boon to the country, adding millions of dollars in local tax revenues and royalty payments and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them providing high pay to unskilled laborers in areas with double-digit unemployment.

But the jobs are also hazardous, with fatality rates that are seven times the national average across all industries. Nearly a third of the 648 deaths of oil field workers from 2003 through 2008 were in highway crashes, according to the most recent data analyzed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By contrast, highway crashes caused roughly a fifth of workplace fatalities across all industries in 2010.

It’s not just that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is under-resourced.  It’s that, according to one OSHA official, the law is terribly weak - specifically,

"[C]ompanies were not required to alert his agency when their truckers crashed on public roads. Nor do they have to inform his agency when drilling starts, making timely inspections difficult.”

By contrast, mining companies are required to alert the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration about new sites. While there are far fewer active oil and gas drilling sites in the country than underground and surface mining sites, more drilling industry workers than miners typically die each year.

What's more, driver fatigue is only part of the problem. 

Oil and gas workers also crash because their trucks are frequently in disrepair, the police say. … Oil service companies also often circumvent highway safety rules. …

In March, the Government Accountability Office criticized federal highway regulators for their failure to detect commercial truckers — widely known as “chameleon carriers” — that use shell companies to get around safety rules.

Even if you’re not an oil/gas worker, you need to care about this because - just guessing - you’ve probably shared the road with a large truck at some point in your life. 

Ducking Responsibility with a Cowardly Legal Move

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the 1850s.  There were lots of laws on the books back then that had no place in that world, let alone today’s world.  Fortunately the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments took care of many of these atrocious laws.  

But one really deplorable law, enacted about 160 years ago, remains on the books even though it, too, has no place in today’s world.  It’s called Limitation of Liability Act (LOLA), which we last discussed in the context of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil gusher, which killed nine.  In maritime disasters, LOLA allows vessel owners to limit their liability to the post-voyage value of the vessel.  So in 2010, rig owner Transocean cited LOLA in an attempt to limit its liability for the Deepwater disaster to $27 million – essentially the costs of the sunken rig.  The U.S. Justice Department called this legal maneuver “simply unconscionable.” Well, as one former President would say, here we go again.

This time, the disaster involves a crash between the two boats on Philadelphia’s Delaware River – actually not so much a crash as a “running-over” of a duck boat, one of those amphibious tourist vehicles, by a 250-foot tugboat-pushed barge in full view of Center City, Philadelphia.  Two tourists (Hungarian students) were killed, and watching the footage, it’s hard to believe that 35 others actually survived this.

Writes Reuters, a federal trial began this week “to determine whether the boat companies, Ride the Ducks and K-Sea Transportation Partners, which operated a tugboat that was pushing the barge, can claim federal maritime liability limits.” 

The companies are trying to limit their liability to the value of the boats, or “$150,000 for Ride the Ducks and $1.65 million for K-Sea.” The students’ parents are suing, trying to get the cap lifted.

Of course, the companies are trying to place entire blame on the tugboat captain, who was sentenced last November to prison after "pleading guilty to a federal criminal misconduct charge that is the maritime equivalent to involuntary manslaughter.”  Seems he was down below talking on the phone to his wife.   

Isn’t that how it always goes with boat companies these days, who invite tourists for a fun-filled vacations, only to duck responsibility when people end up terrified or dead?  Incredibly, our laws still allow them to do this – or at least try to.  Not that I'm asking for constitutional amendment, but some new laws would be nice.

Warning: this is graphic video.

BP’s Health Impact – We’ve Only Just Begun

Albert Schweitzer once said, “Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”  If you live in the Gulf region, I would imagine you’d need a pretty bad memory to forget the BP oil rig explosion and spill, celebrating it's second anniverary today.  For others, good health may be just as unlikely right now.

Like all environmental disasters, the most serious health effects take time to develop.  Just look at the terrible state of affairs for Ground Zero clean up workers, who are sick and dying more than a decade after 9/11. People are still sick and dying today in Bhopal India, 27 years after a horrendous chemical explosion.  They’re all like this, these catastrophes.

BP’s Gulf Coast disaster is no different.  So much focus has been on the commercial losses suffered by individual and businesses.  Please don’t get me wrong, these are important.  In fact, we note with interest the results of a new audit of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, which found,

Thousands of people affected by the BP oil spill will receive $64 million in additional compensation after an independent audit identified “significant” errors in the claims process set up after the disaster, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The independent audit, conducted for the Justice Department by an outside consulting firm, found that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) did not adequately compensate 7,300 individuals and businesses.

In addition, the audit found 2,600 claims that were wrongly denied, but will not receive additional payments, “because their claim files did not contain information needed to determine whether the claimants sustained a financial loss,” according to an executive summary of the audit.

Notably,

Last month, the Mississippi Center for Justice, which provided pro bono legal services for claimants, said it was helping 7,000 people who were not part of the litigation and were struggling to navigate Feinberg's complex claims process. Martha Bergmark, the center president, said the process needed to be more transparent and equitable.

John Jopling, the center's managing attorney in Biloxi, thanked the Justice Department for a speedy and thorough review, but said the center "hopes it's just the first step to paying tens of thousands of claimants who haven't been paid and may still be awaiting a determination."

Yet those facing health problems are in even worse shape.  So kudos to the Huffington Post, for taking on this issue and, sadly but not unexpectedly, finding some horrendous health problems surfacing - especially among children living close by.  One mom, Nicole Maurer, has several terribly sick children and now, her kitchen cupboard “resembles a pharmacy” with all the medications they need.  Yet until now, her family has had no recourse whatsoever: 

Nicole Maurer’s claims for compensation from BP have so far been “denied, denied, denied,” she says. “Did I say ‘denied?'” Her husband, William, earns a fraction of what he used to as a commercial fisherman, making their plan to move away from the Gulf Coast all but impossible.

… William says he is “sure” he brought chemical dispersants and crude oil home every night while working on the Gulf cleanup. “I never got one piece of protective equipment or clothing,” he says, before erupting into one of his frequent coughing fits and spitting into the garbage can. A lack of protection for the cleanup crews has made its own headlines over the last two years.

I say “until now,” because attorneys working on behalf of the victims have forced BP to cough up some money to help families with chronic health problems and to institute critical medical monitoring.  Kudos to them, because without litigation, BP would have had no motive to do it – especially since they still deny any liability for these claims.

Writes marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott,

For two years, BP and the state and federal governments denied the epidemic of respiratory problems, dizziness and headaches, horrific skin lesions, and blood problems was linked with the oil and chemical disaster -- despite the fact that medical literature identifies these identical symptoms as characteristic of oil spill exposure. Now under the BP-Plaintiffs' Settlement, BP has agreed to pay literally billions of dollars for medical claims, medical monitoring for twenty-one years, medical services, and community health clinics for underserved populations staffed with specialists in chemical illness treatment -- but with no admission of liability.

Of course not.  What else is new?

Oil Industry Faces Off Against Everyone

You would think that with gas prices climbing into the $5 per gallon range, oil companies might want to lay low for awhile - instead of being in everyone’s face.  But what do I know?

Let’s start with the billionaires. In Louisiana, there’s a heated dispute brewing between oil and gas producers, and “the state's wealthiest corporate and individual landowners.”  Writes the Times-Picayune,  

At issue are the law and regulations that govern “legacy lawsuits,” the shorthand for civil actions filed by property owners alleging environmental damages and other claims against energy producers that have previously leased a plaintiff's land. …

A state Senate committee has just held a public hearing on this “billionaires and millionaires versus millionaires and billionaires” dispute.  And when the oil companies are finished down in Baton Rouges, they’ll be heading up to Washington, DC for hearings on legislation that is supposed to be about ethanol, but thanks the Big Oil’s lobbying prowess, has now become legislation about them!

I’m talking about the new Domestic Fuels Protection Act of 2012, on which there are hearings before a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee this Thursday, April 19.  Charles T. Drevna, President of the American Fuels and Petrochemical Manufacturers, will be testifying in favor of the bill, among others.  (Witnesses opposing the legislation are K. Allen Brooks, Senior Assistant Attorney General and Chief, Environmental Protection Bureau for the State of New Hampshire, and Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Policy Counsel, Energy and Environment, Consumers Union Policy & Action from Consumer Reports.) 

Buried in this complicated piece of legislation are provisions that provide broad liability exemptions to fuel producers, engine manufacturers and retailers of virtually all transportation fuels and fuel additives, like methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) - a gasoline additive notorious for leaking from underground storage tanks and contaminating groundwater.  As we and many other organizations noted back in 2003 when similar immunity legislation was pending in Congress, immunity for MTBE contamination “poses unprecedented environmental and public health risks” and “a serious threat to the underground aquifers that supply half of the nation’s drinking water.…MTBE is a toxic and highly persistent chemical that has been added to gasoline since the late 1970s. U.S. Geological Survey experts estimate that there may be 250,000 leaking underground storage tank releases of MTBE.”

Finally, back to the gas pumps, we have a true consumer scandal on which NBC’s Jeff Rossen reported this morning on the Today Show.  Turns out that when it's hot outside, you get far less value for the gas you purchase.  (Hot gas loses energy.) Gas pumps with special meters, which calibrate your purchase based on temperature, are available and widely used in Canada. 

No surprise that the petroleum industry here is fighting hard against any requirement for such meters here.  However, says Rossen, thanks to a bunch of class action lawsuits filed by drivers in 21 states, the industry may be caving.  Costco has now apparently agreeed to install temperature meters in warm weather states.  BP Shell and Conaco have agreed to some kind of settlement too, but the details are yet unclear.  Other gas station chains are expected to be in court next month. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New Orleans Buoyantly Looks Up (We Hope)

When the story hit over the weekend about how defensive players on the New Orleans Saints “maintained a 'bounty' program funded primarily by players … for inflicting injuries on opposing players,” I thought, “we sure could use some news about this great city where someone hasn’t been hurt!”  (Or maybe it was just a bad weekend.)

Those hurt by BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion and massive oil spill were certainly the subject of big news late Friday, when BP agreed to “settle health and economic damage claims by individuals and businesses who were harmed by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill,” removing Ken Feinberg and the tainted Gulf Coast Claims Facility from the claims process and, if approved, substituting instead Patrick Juneau, an experienced special master from Lafayette. BP estimates that the deal will cost about $7.8 billion but the settlement is uncapped, “meaning there's no limit on how much money is available to pay damages.” 

The plaintiffs say that the new process will be more transparent than the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. Calculations will be made under formulas approved by the court, so people will be able to see exactly how their award was made and can dispute it if necessary. Few details are available about how the claims will be organized, but they take into account the types of damage and proximity to the coast. Each claim will be multiplied by a "risk transfer premium" that will differ by type of claims since no punitive damages were awarded by a court. The plaintiffs say that the risk transfer premium will ensure that their deal will pay more in compensation than what Feinberg did, but not enough details have been worked out from their agreement in principle to say what the multipliers are and how large the biggest multiplier is.

"Under the new program, eligible claimants will generally be paid greater benefits than under the GCCF," said Stephen Herman and Jim Roy, liaison counsels for the plaintiffs, in a press release.

Yet that’s not all.  Hurricane Katrina made the news late Friday, too.  As the Times-Picayune reported it,

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a lower court ruling finding the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for flooding portion of the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish during Hurricane Katrina because of its failure to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. If upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling could eventually result in residents, businesses and local governments being reimbursed for damages of as much as $20 billion, according to the lead attorney representing plaintiffs in the case.

We should also note that this decision, “found the corps to be immune for damages to thousands of New Orleans residents caused by flooding when walls along drainage canals in western New Orleans failed,” even though “negligent and wrongful acts of federal employees” may have been involved.  But, said the Court, “the failure to maintain the MR-GO was unrelated to the flood control activities represented by the levees along its banks, and instead was the equivalent of a Navy captain failing to maintain a ship that crashes through a levee.”

AP notes that the lower court judge,

[A]warded a total of nearly $720,000 in damages to five plaintiffs who sued. The corps also has received roughly 500,000 administrative claims that could become fodder for similar suits.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Pierce O’Donnell expressed hope that Friday’s ruling could stimulate settlement talks with the government to resolve the pending claims.

“This is a landmark victory, not just for the people ravaged by Katrina’s flooding but for all Americans,” he said. “We must hold our government accountable when it inflicts avoidable harm on its citizens.”

Next up – shaking that “Murder City” title.  One step at a time.  

BP - Rolling It In as the Trial Date Nears

Remember when BP cut its dividend payments in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster?  Well, that was then.  This is now.  According to The Street in a post called “Don't Look Now, BP Best Performing Big Oil Stock,” BP is now “the biggest dividend payer among the Big Oil stocks and, at a 3.6% forward yield currently, is still well above the rate paid by Exxon Mobil which is at 2%.”

Now that the federal government and some state governments are apparently trying for a “global settlement” with BP in advance of the big February 27 trial date, I hope they keep that in mind.  According to reports, such a settlement would “resolve federal civil fines under the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and other laws; compensate federal and state governments for damages to natural resources; and settle any criminal violations as well."

But no matter what the governments do, the committee of lawyers representing more than 100,000 individuals and businesses suing for compensation and punitive damages say they’re going to trial.

And even if some of those claims are small or difficult to prove, says one expert, “even a small group of strong plaintiffs could easily have claims totaling $1 billion.”  Plus punitive damages.  

Let’s hope for that!

For more about what’s coming up in the case, click here.