“LONDON (Reuters) – BP Plc has been hit by over 2,200 new lawsuits seeking payback for the 2010Gulf of Mexico oil spill in the past few weeks as individuals, companies and government bodies rushed to stake their claim before their right to do so expired.
The British oil company, whose deepwater Macondo well ruptured on April 20, 2010, killing 11 men and spilling crude into the sea for weeks, revealed the number of new claims made since March 6 in its first-quarter results on Tuesday.
The United States Oil Pollution Act of 1990, under which most of the new lawsuits were registered, has a three year statute of limitations which could make bringing further legal action difficult after the third anniversary of the disaster.
BP said it would be applying to have the new legal challenges consolidated into a trial that is already under way in New Orleans.
The first phase of the trial of BP and its partners in the well, Transocean and Halliburton , ended earlier in April, but the judge, Carl Barbier, has yet to rule on the degree of blame that will be apportioned to each party and on the level of negligence that will be applied.
Both decisions could have a big impact on the size of BP’s final liability, already measured in tens of billions of dollars. His ruling, to be made without a jury as is traditional under U.S. maritime law, could come this summer…”
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