US lawmakers are to rule on whether a judge was right to approve BP’s multi-billion dollar settlement for compensating victims of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Lawyers for both sides last night returned to court to argue whether the class-action deal agreed last year was correct in the latest round of legal disputes surrounding the Macondo spill.
BP claims Judge Carl Barbier and claims administrator Patrick Juneau interpreted the settlement in way that would force it to pay for billions of dollars in inflated or bogus claims by businesses.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers counter that BP simply undervalued the settlement and underestimated how many claimants would be eligible for payments.
Theodore Olson, representing the oil giant, said the deal had become “something else” after Judge Barbier upheld Juneau’s interpretation of terms governing payouts to businesses.
“Black became white,” he told the court.
“BP supports the settlement as properly construed and implemented to compensate claims for actual losses caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
Lawyers not involved in the negotiations also claimed the settlement allowed claimants who did not sustain damages from the spill to make claims as they argued it should not have been approved in its current form.
However, lawyers for businesses affected say BP undervalued the settlement and underestimated how many claimants would be eligible.
“They’ve all lost their livelihood or their business revenue as a result of the economic calamity” caused by the spill, said Samuel Issacharoff, representing the plaintiffs.
Three US Appeals court judges heard the case, but did not indicate when they would issue their findings. An appeal ruling last month on a different aspect of the compensation process may need to be determined before the latest appeal can be resolved.
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