Judge Barbier found that even less oil spilled than BP said spilled. Why would he do that you ask? He appointed his friends to the Plaintiff's Steering Committee (PSC) for the economic damages case for all of the victims. He gave them a cut of every settlement whether the victim had an attorney or not. When most of the cases started to settle outside of the lawsuit in the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) he tried to give them a cut of that, but found he legally could not do it. At that time BP was about to start their trial against Haliburton and Trans Ocean and they didn't want to so they approached the PSC with a deal. Get your Judge to freeze all settlement negotiations, get rid of the GCCF, reset our trial with Haliburton and Trans Ocean, and announce we have reached an agreement to settle all claims in the form of a Class Action Settlement. In return we will pay the PSC (Judge's buddies) $600,000,000 dollars at the end of the Class Settlement only if it goes through to completion without being overturned on appeal.
Now the Class Settlement is denying 75% of all claims and the PSC will do nothing to overturn this shitty deal. Most of the victims are still waiting to hear about their claims and BP publicly said they have settled all legitimate claims. You have a cabal of lawyers on both sides rigging everything and the Judge's rulings have gone backwards. Initially he ruled that while no victim on land could even argue for gross negligence, fishermen and others that made their living on the water could. He took that away just like he has taken away the government's gross negligence argument.
Everyone believes this has been over for awhile because BP has spent a lot of money to say it is. They have been one of the largest advertisers in the country, even sponsoring 2 U.S. Olympic teams (they are BRITISH Petroleum). They have been the largest advertiser on the Gulf Coast since the spill as well. This means the media will, and have not, run stories about the victims and what is really going on down here.
Ed Schultz contacted my boss, who appears on his show from time-to-time, because he wanted to do a story on the state of the Gulf waters. When he got down we showed him what was going on with the settlement and even he said he thought that was over. When we showed him the statistics from the settlement he was shocked. Things like out of 7,000 failed business claims they paid 4! He ended up doing a whole week on it! Cudos Ed, fan for life!
= new reply since forum marked as read
