On August 1, 2014, BP filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to reverse two rulings by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on economic loss claims related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. BP is alleging that the rulings allow claimants who suffered no injury in the spill to be awarded a piece of the $9.2 billion settlement.
At issue is whether these claimants should be required to establish a causal nexus between their alleged injuries and the 2010 spill. In the petition, BP alleges that the claims administrator has paid “more than $76 million to entities whose losses had nothing to do with the spill, as well as an additional $546 million to claimants that are located far from the spill and are engaged in businesses whose revenues and profits bear no logical connection to the spill.”
The Supreme Court filing has been expected since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court ruling that the complex settlement agreed to by BP provided an adequate mechanism for establishing causation, because claimants must certify, under penalty of perjury, that they were injured by the oil spill. The certification signed by claimants also states that BP will investigate claims which appear to be false or fraudulent. The Fifth Circuit denied BP’s request for a rehearing en banc on May 19, 2014.
The full text of the petition can be found at https://www.thestateofthegulf.com/media/81611/Petition.pdf. For more information, contact Toni Ellington at (504) 599-8500.
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