Source: ENE News
Stuart H. Smith - 9/4/12
In a bombshell federal court filing, U.S. government lawyers are slamming British Petroleum for making false and misleading statements that seek to both dodge blame for 2010′s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and ignore the ongoing environmental devastation, from diseased dolphins to destroyed wetlands.
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In a separate filing, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange also accuses the oil company of misrepresentation and argues that BP committed “willful misconduct”
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Scores of plaintiffs — including some represented by my law firm — are challenging [BP's proposed settlement] deal as unfair, ignoring issues such as the long-term neurological damage to clean-up workers and other Gulf residents who were exposed to massive amounts of the toxic dispersant Corexit that was deployed by BP.
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the federal papers state the goverment had no initially [sic] intention of getting involved with the proceedings before [Judge] Barbier, but its lawyers were forced to respond because of “new evidence, and plainly misleading representations” made by BP. In essence, the feds are disputing the very factual underpinnings of the settlement.
The federal filing is hugely important for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, it puts government agencies solidly behind some of the key allegations made on this blog and elsewhere over the past two years — that BP isn’t telling the truth when it tries to convince the American people in slick TV commercials that everything is back to normal in the Gulf and that BP is a responsible corporate citizen.
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It’s hard to stress the critical importance of these court filings by the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Alabama. They stand as powerful confirmation of some of the issues that led me to start writing this blog in the first place — proof that both the gross misconduct of BP and the ongoing harm that it has caused to the Gulf and to the coastline are much greater than the American public realizes.
