The trial over last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster will unfold in three phases and will start as scheduled on Feb. 27, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier said Friday.
U.S. District Judge Carl BarbierBarbier said at a monthly status conference in the oil spill litigation that he will issue an order soon sketching out plans for next year's trial over liability in the disaster. His plan most closely resembles the proposal submitted by Anadarko Petroleum Co., which held a 25 percent ownership stake in the ill-fated Macondo well.
"I fully intend this trial will start as scheduled on Feb. 27, 2012," said Barbier, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The initial "incident phase" of the trial will examine the role of the various defendants in the loss of well control, the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the initiation of the flow of oil.
Although Barbier has not said how long the initial phase might last, several parties to the oil spill litigation contemplated in briefs this spring that it would probably take several months.
After a break, the court would begin a second phase of the trial focusing on efforts to control and shut down the well and how much oil was actually lost.
A third phase would deal with other liability issues, such as efforts to skim and burn the oil, the use of dispersants and boom.
Some 549 cases over the April 2010 well-blowout and 86-day oil spill have been consolidated in Barbier's court, and 108,000 individuals have filed claims alleging harm.
Getting to a February 2012 trial has required monumental effort on the part of scores of attorneys involved in the case. Some 176 depositions have been taken over the past six months, with multiple depositions going on each day and individual depositions often lasting two days and generating hundreds of pages of transcripts. In June, attorneys and court officials traveled to London to depose BP executives.
Another 31 depositions aimed at establishing the facts in the case are scheduled. After that the focus will shift to depositions of experts weighing in on the evidence.
As preparation for the main trial continues. plaintiff and defense attorneys are working to examine contract disputes arising from the Vessels of Opportunity program, in which private boats were hired to help clean up the oil in the Gulf. Boat owners say in a lawsuit that they were underpaid and that their vessels weren't decontaminated as promised.
The plaintiff and defense steering committees have each picked three cases as proxies for the contract disputes and are doing limited discovery of the facts in the incidents with an eye toward possible mediation.
Barbier said he stands ready to appoint someone to deal with disputes arising from the Vessels of Opportunity program, which involved thousands of boats. "This could expand," he said. "I'm not sure how many of these Vessels of Opportunity cases could be out there."
Rebecca Mowbray can be reached at rmowbray@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3417.
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