The scale of the oil spill being experienced in the USA has no direct comparison in history, it is now the largest uncontrolled discharge of oil from a man made facility on record and BP is still not only struggling with the spill itself but also starting to get coated in a thick black slick of negative PR and potentially a toxic set of legal claims by people affected by the spill. As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues into its second month, BP has already committed to paying for the recovery efforts and all “legitimate claims,” but lawmakers are considering raising legal liability limits from $75 million to $10 billion.
The parties who could possibly claim as a result of the spill is any tourism operator whose business was affected by the spill or any coastal fisherman, coastal farming industry operator anyone else whose livelihood was dependent on the environment that existed prior to the spill and has now been destroyed as a result of the accident. This is not to mention that claims that could arise from the various local, state and federal authorities who could potentially prosecute the company for criminal negligence or fine them for breaches of environmental health and safety regulations. This case is similar to the one at camp lejeune, for which those affected will be looking for a camp lejeune water contamination attorney and personal injury attorney who can assist them in resolving this matter via legal means. Employees who got injured in similar accidents may hire a workers compensation lawyer to help them file a claim.
Perhaps the closest analogy in recent history to the scale of the spill that has occurred is the Exxon Valdez disaster which occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989 when the tanker hit Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated minimum 10.8 million US gallons (40.9 million litres, or 250,000 barrels) of crude oil. In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages. The punitive damages amount was equal to a single year’s profit by Exxon at that time and Exxon was one the ten largest companies in the world by revenue at the time. In this particular case, the tanker was allegedly drunk. However, the actual causes of the disaster were later identified as being a faulty radar system and the negligence of the company in placing excessive requirements on the third mate of the vessel. The present spill has similarities because experts associated with the maintenance of the well expressed concerns about ‘well control’ in the months before the accident. The direct cause of the accident was that at approximately 9:45 p.m. CDT on April 20, 2010, methane gas from the well under high pressure shot up and out of the drill column marine riser, expanded onto the platform, and then ignited and exploded, destroying the well and allowing crude oil to gush out into the surrounding ocean uncontrollably. Early attempts to cap the well also failed. This element of company negligence is in common and for this reason it is expected that BP will face an even larger bill for the spill than Exxon did in its disaster.
