A new wave of lawsuits against BP is hitting the federal courts nearly a decade after the Gulf oil spill.
The new litigation is the result of a court ruling that blocks thousands of people from a medical settlement negotiated after the 2010 environmental disaster. It threatens to clog court dockets for years, and it means plaintiffs like Sherry Carney might have to wait a long time for their day in court.
“It was a fine line between life and death; I can tell you that,” Carney tells WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama, reflecting on how the oil spill changed her life. Carney was a Dauphin Island, Alabama, city councilwoman at the time. She said she had planned to make her house on the island’s fragile west end her “forever home.” But she said that months of breathing in toxic fumes took a toll on her health.
In 2012, she said she spent 34 days in the hospital, part of it in the intensive care unit.
One of BP’s wells blew out off the coast of Louisiana in 2010, leading to the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Eleven rig workers were killed and millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf for 87 days.
After the oil spill, federal courts consolidated all lawsuits under U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans. Part of that litigation involved a medical settlement for coastal residents and cleanup workers with spill-related health issues.
But under a ruling by Barbier, the fund is not available to anyone who did not have a doctor’s diagnosis by April 16, 2012, or two years after the accident. That shut out people with cancer and other conditions that take a long time to develop. It also bars people like Carney who say they felt the effects shortly after the spill but did not get a prompt diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t understand that part,” says Craig Downs, a Miami lawyer who represents some 2,000 people from Florida to Texas.
In court filings, BP attorneys deny responsibility for the plaintiffs’ injuries. Jason Ryan, a spokesman for BP America, says the company has no other comment.
Unless there is some sort of settlement that resolves all of these cases, the lawsuits could last for years, and Downs says he expects additional lawsuits. Read the full story.
