The settlement will be used to repair damage to the area's economies and ecosystems. It was a "historic milestone" which will ensure the Gulf Coast comes back "stronger and more vibrant than before the disaster," Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said. The settlement follows 11 felony manslaughter charges which BP pleaded guilty to in The company has described Credit Suisse's calculations as "nonsense.
Personal Finance. More high-profile figures are likely to follow in a multiyear settlement process that has morphed from a way to compensate businesses for lost revenues into a series of protracted legal battles between BP and some high-profile New Orleans, and national, claimants. The environmental, economic and medical impacts of the oil spill sparked by the Deepwater Horizon disaster reached hundreds of miles inland to wreak complicated havoc on five Gulf states, and the cascades of litigation to follow were just as complex.
In exchange for a waiver of liability, the fund made quick cash payouts. But some of the people affected by the spill questioned the decisions made by oil spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg, who was paid by BP itself. Many of the individuals, governments and companies along the coast pressed their claims separately in federal court.
The U. In , BP also settled claims from tens of thousands of private plaintiffs who said they suffered economic or medical problems because of the spill. The settlement covered a wide array of aggrieved parties and created an elaborate mechanism for deciding how much money they should receive. Just four days before the ninth anniversary of the catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, state coastal officials outlined….
The settlement put no cap on a wide variety of other claims, however. Businesses and individuals were also free to press their cases that they had suffered economic losses as a result of the spill. Wetlands property owners were to be compensated for the impact on their land. Individual fishers would also receive money for the lost food they would have used for their own subsistence. Court-appointed administrator Patrick Juneau handled the claims with input from accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Both BP and claimants, meanwhile, had the right to challenge awards or non-awards to a panel of lawyers outside of court. After that, they could pursue objections with U. But he was under no obligation to consider individual appeals.
As the costs have risen, BP and private parties have engaged in courtroom battles over the settlement terms and payout amounts. In one major decision in , Barbier excluded thousands of people with chronic health problems diagnosed years after the spill from the settlement. BP has not reached a separate settlement with them, and many still await their day in court.
The plaintiffs say that under their understanding of the settlement, the formula for determining business claims was supposed to be straightforward and mathematical, to ensure that claims were paid out quickly. But within months of the settlement, BP was casting some claimants as fraudsters and blasting the claims administrator, Juneau. Businesses dissatisfied with zero-dollar payments, or payments they saw as too low, have also pressed their cases in court. The courts have accepted award appeals for review, according to the Deepwater Horizon Claims Center.
BP filed of those appeals. The judge has generally observed the confidentiality of the settlement claims. But since , when the circuit court signaled that it would review claims as well, a steady stream of cases has trickled up to the higher court.
And it has increasingly unsealed swaths of case records for public view. But its chief executive, Bob Dudley, has said felt like a turning point, as compensation payouts drew to a close. The latest financial pain for BP will be offset considerably by rising oil prices. This article is more than 3 years old.
The Deepwater Horizon rig pictured on fire the day after the accident on 20 April
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