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BP, buyer’s remorse and the future of mass tort settlements [USA]
The oil giant BP has recently done a very good job of casting itself as the victim of greedy plaintiffs lawyers looking to get rich by submitting unwarranted claims for businesses that weren’t actually harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill…BP went to the appeals court after U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier approved the class action administrator’s interpretation of how business economic losses should be calculated under the settlement. In the oil company’s view, Barbier and the administrator, Patrick Juneau, have essentially rewritten settlement terms to invite claims by businesses that suffered no losses attributable to the oil spill…Future defendants will learn from BP’s experience that proof of causation should be a tougher obstacle, or that definitions for even basic accounting terms must be negotiated and spelled out. [Also refers to Halliburton]