Lawsuit against BP
Cruise operator Carnival Corp has filed a lawsuit against BP Plc and other companies seeking damages that resulted from the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
The lawsuit, filed on April 20 in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, also named Cameron International Corp, Transocean Ltd, and Halliburton Co, along with several others.
Carnival said it lost bookings and revenues for cruises in the Gulf of Mexico from ports in Florida, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana. It is seeking unspecified economic and compensatory damages with interest, the costs of litigation, and punitive damages.
Carnival is suing all defendants for negligence and Cameron specifically for allegedly designing and manufacturing a defective blowout preventer.
It is also suing BP, Transocean, and Halliburton for fraudulent concealment of material facts about the spill. BP “did not provide complete and timely announcements and warnings about the severity, forecast and trajectory of the oil spill,” the complaint said. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and Halliburton manufactured the cement used to seal the well.
The cruise operator filed the 26-page lawsuit in the same court where hundreds of other lawsuits against BP and its partners have been consolidated. A federal judge has set a trial date of February 2012.
Also last week, BP filed cross-claims against Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron in the same court, seeking the full cost of the disaster, estimated at $42 billion.
The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon”, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 2:10-md-02179.
For Carnival: Curtis J. Mase and John P. Salas of Mase Lara Eversole, P.A.
Source: Reuters
