The first people nearly everyone affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster see aren't guys in Tyvek hoods and respirators. They're guys in Brooks Brothers.
From the rig workers who were told they couldn't call their families until they'd signed forms stating I was not injured as a result of the incident or evacuation, to the fishermen whose contracts for the "Vessels of Opportunity" jobs included a waiver of their right to sue, all touched by the spill meet the lawyers first.
That a large energy corporation would lead with the lawyers may be outrageous, but it's not surprising. Nor is it much of a shocker that BP has already begun venue-shopping, asking the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to have all pretrial motions in all class actions against the company heard not in the jurisdictions where the harm was done, but in Houston's Southern District (U.S. Fifth District Appellate), the honorable U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes presiding.
BP's lawyers have some reasons to suspect they might get a better hearing in the Fifth than local or state courts. Republicans in the White House have done their damndest to stock the Fifth with the most conservative judges they can find, resulting in surprising strictness or leniency toward business interests, depending on whether they are plaintiffs or defendants. (See Cases like Citigroup Global Markets v. Bacon or FDIC v. Hurwitz.)
Whether or not BP, et. al. find a sympathetic ear in Judge Hughes, moving any actions out of local areas is a sound legal tactic. When Boudreaux takes the stand and answers "How much money did you make shrimping before the spill?" with a respectable five or six figures, then answers "How much after the spill?" with "I didn't make no money after that," the last thing BP's lawyers want is a jury box filled with more Boudreauxs, Thibodeauxs, Arceneauxs and other 'eauxs.
Venue-shopping is also a time-honored method for oil companies to delay the inevitable judgements, which is part of the lawyers' job. By attempting every venue change and trying every appellate option, they can not only delay payouts for decades, they can sometimes get them reduced by sympathetic judges to a pittance of the original judgements. Not that that would ever happen, though, right?
Still, it seems pretty early in the game for BP to be going so blatantly full-on lawyer. Basic brand-salvaging PR dictates a period of heavy advertising about how hard they're working to make things better and how much their loyal customers appreciate the efforts. (See Toyota Motor Company.) Why the legal scorched earth?
Well, mostly because of the actual scorched earth. Or scorched sea.
We are barely into the investigative phase of this disaster, in DC and closer to home, and it's already becoming apparent that this was a predictable and preventable fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck uuuuuuuuup.
Gas kicks had already shut down the rig weeks before the explosion. Engineers repeatedly warned against pulling out the drilling mud before cementing the final cap.
Even at this early stage, an evidentiary trail is being blazed that makes this case a plaintiff's attorney's dream.
So much so that, last week, New Orleans lawyer Morris Bart (warning: talking web site) reappeared on local television screens.
Bart was a pioneer in the field of Car Wreck Lawyers on TV. His incessant advertising on local stations (usually late at night during bad movies) made him a New Orleans television icon, almost equal to quirky advert celebrities like Al Scramuzza and Frankie and Johnny's Special Man.
In the new ads, we don't see satisfied plaintiffs proudly displaying the checks Bart got them after their car wreck, nor any of the playful self-mockery of his earlier ads.
In the new ads, Bart stands in front of a picture of the burning Deepwater Horizon and implores viewers who believe they've been harmed by the oil spill to call his office right away. He's Morris Bart and he's on your side.
Heck, for 30% of this baby, I'd be on your side, too. All the delaying tactics, all the blame-shifting, all the venue-shopping in the world can't hide the rapidly-emerging truth that BP and Halliburton and Transocean are spreadeagled in the road in this case.
When you've got the finest legal talent money can buy, a sympathetic judiciary and all the time in the world, and Morris freaking Bart wants a piece of you, you're in a heap of trouble.