T-Room

The Best in Alt News

February 28, 2012

BP oil spill trial delay stirs up talk of a brewing settlement

By Rebecca Mowbray, The Times-Picayune

Although there’s no guarantee a settlement will be reached, people who have been following the oil spill litigation say U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier wouldn’t have delayed the trial until next Monday if he didn’t think a deal was in reach to settle at least a portion of the case or possibly all of it. “I think it indicates that the parties were able to convince him that there was a realistic possibility of settling the private plaintiffs portion of the case,” said Blaine LeCesne, a Loyola tort law professor who has been following the case.

The litigation over the April 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 men and unleashed an 87-day oil spill, was scheduled to start Monday morning, but on Sunday afternoon, Barbier delayed it for a week to give BP more time to negotiate a settlement with some of the private plaintiffs in the case. Though settling with the private plaintiffs — a group that includes a range of individuals and businesses affected by the spill — would be a significant development, the litigation also involves claims brought by the states of Louisiana and Alabama well as the federal government.

Settlement talks between BP and the state and federal governments allegedly broke down weeks ago, but legal observers said Monday that the delay in the trial could put those talks back on track.

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April 23, 2011

One Year Later the Largest Man-made Environmental Disaster in American History Continues to Wreak Havoc

Letter to the Ruling Class

You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit… we are bleeding… but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution!

Sincerely,

The Serfs.

By Helen Tansey

April 20, 2011 marked the one-year anniversary of the tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. Following is snapshot of what we’ve learned over the last 12 months since the spill. It’s not good. Instead, it’s embarrassingly horrific and it appears our Gulf Coast family is carrying this heavy burden alone.

One year later we learn from the Center for Biological Diversity some disturbing facts when they combed through “government figures, news reports and scientific articles. To provide a more accurate estimate of the death toll, we used multiplication factors identified by leading scientists that estimate how many more animals are killed than are actually observed or collected.” The results of their study are highlighted in “A Deadly Toll: The Gulf Oil Spill and the Unfolding Wildlife Disaster which states – [Read more…]