A federal judge today outlined his plan for conducting a trial designed to assign percentages of fault to the companies sued over last year’s deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of New Orleans, who oversees tens of thousands of claims spawned by the disaster, says the trial scheduled to start Feb. 27, 2012, will be held in three phases.
The first phase will focus on causes of the well blowout, rig blast and release of oil. Barbier called this the “incident phase.” The second phase deals with efforts to stop the gusher and quantify how much oil spilled from the well owned by BP. The third phase will include testimony about spill cleanup. Barbier will preside over the trial without a jury. The proceedings are expected to last several months. Besides apportioning fault, the trial also is designed to determine whether rig owner Transocean can limit what it pays claimants under maritime law. Trial preparations have included depositions by 176 witnesses and generated more than five million pages of documents shared among the parties, a BP lawyer says.
