Ten years, $12 billion and nearly 400,000 settled claims later, the impact of the Deepwater Horizon explosions still being litigated by dozens of companies seeking economic damages and thousands of people who say they got sick from the crude that contaminated the Gulf of Mexico, beaches and coastal marshes.
What are left are the most complex cases of business cases and people who either chose not to join class-action settlement of medical claims, which paid victims of acute illnesses $3,000, or claim they suffered chronic illnesses, such as cancer, for which symptoms did not appear until after eligibility deadlines to receive compensation from the settlement passed.
Craig Downs, a Florida lawyer representing more than 800 people making chronic-illness claims, estimated that some 5,700 of spill-related medical cases are still waiting to be heard by the courts.
George Barisich, a shrimper from St. Bernard Parish and president of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association, a Louisiana seafood trade association, is one of them. He said that he suffers from heart and respiratory problems and memory lapses, which he blames on the work he and hundreds of other fishermen did cleaning up the spill.
To qualify for the roughly $60,000 offered in settlement, he had to see a doctor by April 16, 2012, but he says his symptoms did not appear until after that date. Many other fishermen who claim they became sick after working on the cleanup of the spill, also missed the diagnosis deadline to qualify for the settlement, said Barisich, who has acted as spokesman for many Louisiana seafood workers.
They claim that exposure to chemical dispersants used to break down the spilled oil has caused a range of chronic illnesses, including cancer. Downs said it can take years for some cancers to appear.
“There is going to be a lot more of these kinds of cancer cases,” Downs said.
BP declined to comment on its settlement of medical claims.
The more than $12 billion BP has paid economic and medical claims is just a small part of the $69 billion the company spent on damages, penalties, fines, cleanup and clean-up costs and environmental restoration.
BP made an $18.7 billion settlement with the federal government in 2016 to resolve all economic and environmental claims related to the spill. It also made a $4.9 billion settlement with the five Gulf Coast states and an additional $1 billion settlement with 400 local jurisdictions.
Two groups
In the last report from the Deepwater Horizon Claims Center, which oversaw claims in a class action settlement, estimated that by July 31, 2018, some 390,721 of 390,783 case had been resolved.
The remaining economic cases fall into two groups. The first group consists of plaintiffs for which it was difficult to determine how the class action rules applied to them. For example, in some cases, the issue revolves around the question of whether business activities fell within the geographical area known as the impact zone.
Some businesses, such as banks and other oil companies, were excluded from the settlement. One business, represented by Brent Coons, a Beaumont lawyer, did not automatically qualify for the settlement because as a startup, it could not measure losses based on the previous year’s revenues.
“The settlement process was very complicated and ambiguous with a lot of subjectivity,” said Coons, who represented more than 10,000 spill-related clients, including casinos, shrimp boats and processors, seafood restaurants and tourism businesses.
Seafood claims settled
Essentially all claims from the seafood industry were settled through a $2.3 billion seafood compensation fund. The size of the payouts depended on the previous income for seafood workers, meaning that fishing boat owners typically received much more generous compensation than deckhands.
Whether the settlements have made the seafood industry whole is a more complicated question. As of 2017, the most recent year for which data was available, the oyster industry was producing about 13 million pounds of oyster meet, down from about 15 million in 2009, the year before Deepwater Horizon exploded.
Other factors, such as warming oceans caused by climate change, may also have contributed to the seafood industry’s slow recovery. But one thing is certain, said Joel Waltzer, a New Orleans-based partner with Waltzer, Wiygul, Garside, the fishery has changed.
“We don’t see the fish where they were,” said Waltzer, who represented hundreds of clients in the seafood industry. “we don’t see the crabs out there.”
emilysusanpickrell@gmail.com
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Ten years later, many Deepwater Horizon claims still in court - Houston Chronicle
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