Client_News

Houston Chronicle:

Though lawyers all along the Gulf Coast and from environmental groups nationwide have sued BP over the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Southeast Texas has a group of lawyers who've sued BP before, repeatedly.

Some of these lawyers say they may have an edge in the oil spill cases because they've sparred with BP before over the Texas City plant explosion that killed 15 in 2005, other individual deaths at that plant, chemical spills, price fixing and other matters.

Others doubt that past fights with BP will help in the massive upcoming litigation alleging deaths, injury and economic loss arising from the well blowout April 20 that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killed 11 workers and led to the oil spill that still is spewing thousands of barrels of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
BP is not the only defendant in the lawsuits. Others include Transocean, which owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon, and contractors Halliburton and Cameron. But BP may wind up with the biggest piece of the liability as the company that leased the rig and holds the federal lease in which the well is located.

...

Kurt Arnold, a Houston lawyer who has had about a dozen previous cases against BP and sued Transocean as well, said the lawyers on the other side are likely to change.

Houston Lawyer Kurt Arnold in Deepwater Horizon newspaper article

"I know from past experience that BP will use its unlimited budget to pay as little as possible," said Arnold, who has filed suits over Deepwater Horizon too.

"BP will only take responsibility when it has no other choice. In this case, it will likely take a jury or the threat of a jury to make them do the right thing," Arnold said.

"BP has an image problem and a safety cultural problem. Juries know about it too."

Ronald Krist, a Clear Lake area plaintiffs' lawyer who worked the defense side for BP in the Texas City explosion cases, said he doesn't think the local lawyers who've sued BP in the past will get much advantage from their experience.

"Each one of these cases stands on its own. The causation aspects bear no resemblance," Krist said.

Krist said the attitude may be different with the change at the top of the company and that the presence of co-defendants in the oil spill case could change the dynamics. 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7017267.html

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