Rig Workers Made to Sign Statements after Blast

[RamboLiberal]

Source: CBS News/AP

Workers aboard an exploding offshore drilling platform were told to sign statements denying they were hurt or witnessed the blast that rocked the rig, killed 11 and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, their attorneys said Tuesday.

Survivors floated for hours in life boats in the Gulf of Mexico following the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon, and were greeted by company officials onshore asking them to sign statements that they had no "first hand or personal knowledge" of the incident, attorneys said.

"These men are told they have to sign these statements or they can't go home," said Tony Buzbee, a Houston-based attorney for 10 Transocean workers. "I think it's pretty callous, but I'm not surprised by it."

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The men were kept for at least 10 hours at sea, then taken to a hotel on shore in Louisiana to sign the forms and be debriefed, according to Buzbee and court documents filed in lawsuits already brought by some Transocean employees. While such statements have no legal force and are a common industry practice, they are often used to attack the credibility of workers who later sue or testify in a lawsuit, Buzbee said.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/11/national/main6473039.shtml?tag=stack

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Criminal.

Will anyone care?

[katandmoon]

3. No. When all is said and one, the WH and congress will look out for BP mgmt., not the workers

[pundaint]

21. If only that was not a certainty...

We know it, we believe it, yet incumbents get reelected. Whose fault is it? We need to stop being afraid, and start owning the country again.

[MellowDem]

28. This was Transocean, not BP, in this case. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Does not that invalidate their signatures, since it means that they were

given 'under duresse'?

[FiveGoodMen]

7. My guess is that these statements will be used in two ways...

1) Intimidate them. Threaten legal action if they say their statements were false, and ...

2) Discredit them if they testify in court.

Yes, duress should invalidate the statements, but the waters may be muddied enough for the offenders to get away.

[truedelphi]

11. Plus the trials will be held in LA (I imagine) a state not

Noted for giving those who go up against Big Oil much of a chance.

I did see the story on The News Hour last night, and hoping that some major, heavy hitting attorneys get on board the case and see that justice is done for the workers.

[Joe Chi Minh]

31. 'Yes, duress should invalidate the statements, but the waters may be muddied enough

for the offenders to get away.'

If so, it will be a terrible indictment of the legal professions, that it should have been foreseen - just as you have - in such a straight-forward matter, yet efforts of obfuscation were allowed to prevail over the most elementary common-sense.

However, it would clearly not be the first time that the application of human law by the courts has proved to be depraved.

[KansDem]

4. What scum!

The men were kept for at least 10 hours at sea, then taken to a hotel on shore in Louisiana to sign the forms and be debriefed... 'These men are told they have to sign these statements or they can't go home'

I don't know which one is more filthy/more slippery/more toxic: the corporate CEOs or the oil they unleashed into the Gulf!

[Warpy]

6. Since they're all in agreement about those signatures being extorted

under extreme duress, those signatures are invalid.

Those slimy company executives sure had their heads up their asses on this one.

[JDPriestly]

13. Attorneys opposing BP will have to ask the court to exclude them

from evidence. But it is hard to exclude such things from impeachment evidence. If you signed the document under duress then, how can we know you are not speaking under duress right now? That's the argument that can be made.

[Joe Chi Minh]

32. Duresse from whom? Cui bono? What's more, surely, attempting to pervert the course

of justice would inevitably ensue from such use of duresse.

In any case, my point was that the jurors and certainly the judge and crews' attorneys should plead that that defence you adduce was bound to be used, but surely common-sense dictates that the said crew have an 'open and shut' case. Fol de rols of the law - and we all know they exist and can be used to thwart jusice - should not be allowed to thwart the most obvious natural justice. Or, as applies here, legal justice.

[SPedigrees]

15. I couldn't have said it better.

The fishermen who were hired by BP for the oil cleanup operations were also coerced into signing similar waivers as a term of their employment. BP destroyed their livelihoods and then offers them employment providing they promise not to sue. They are sub-scum.

[pundaint]

22. It's the politicians, who are the only ones in the whole continuum hired to work in the interests of

the People. Corporations are obliged to maximize their profit, Government exists to defend us and provide for our general welfare. Government has not been doing it's job, and the voters have not been doing theirs.

While culpable, the corporations are the only ones who know what they're supposed to be doing here.

[L0oniX]

23. Kidnapping?

[MountainLaurel]

37. This answers a question

That the local media was asking when the explosion took place: Why did it take so long to get the men ashore, and why the stop at the hotel first. I don't even think they were able to see their families first, if my memory serves correctly.

[BeyondGeography]

5. Corporate fucks

:mad:

[wtmusic]

8. Pure intimidation, no legal consequence. nt

[WinkyDink]

9. Yep, unions are passe'.

*sarcasm*

[Proletariatprincess]

24. My union says to sign nothing but your paycheck.

The bosses just have to accept that. They still try, but that is union policy and they don't get away with it very often.

[Brickbat]

10. Mr. Brickbat works a dangerous heavy-industry job and I do worry about an accident.

I visualize it in my head and while I assume I will get a phone call, I have thought through a scenario where company officials come and offer me a settlement as long as I "sign here" and never file suit. I know who I'd call in that situation and I have their number handy.

[Hekate]

12. ... godless, soulless, bastards of BP ...

May Justice come upon them

Hekate

[MellowDem]

29. It was Transocean. nt

[Hekate]

30. May Justice come upon ALL of them; may their finger-pointing become a circular firing squad. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

34. There's a weird symmetry here, since the Thatcher family have or have had

substantial interests in Burma Oil/BP, while, with Reagan, she was the arch-deregulator.

Oddly enough. Adam Smith wasn't. Indeed, quite the reverse. He plainly considered merchants to be latent but incorrigible criminals, and indeed traitors against the common good, needing constant monitoring and control. Above all, they needed to be taxed to supply just compensation from the workers on whose labours they depend.

The following maxim of Smith's is not an encomium on avarice, but the simple recognition in this particular context of the age-old Christian precept that (supernatural) grace builds upon nature.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest," he wrote. "We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." In doing so under conditions of true competition, the public good is often promoted as if by "an invisible hand."

In the last sentence, note the words, 'under conditions of true competition', and 'often', always expurgated by the right-wing from their fictitious Adam Smith's precepts.

We are not angels (pure spirits), we have bodies and need physical sustenance. The relatively stunted spiritual development of the worldly-wise is more aptly deployed in the furtherance of that basic need. So 'the Hidden Hand' would have been the grace of God creating synergies in response to the right-ordering of human affairs in this matter of trade.

Evidently, the English aristocrats, who, particularly as scions of the Vikings, had obtained their wealth by plunder, and had begun to envy the success of the merchant-class in acquiring and increasing their wealth by trading - without even the capacity to tax the impoverished populace. Moreover, the merchants must have been smart enough to conceal their true wealth from taxation, and the aristos have been aware of it. And that would have led to their hindrance of trade that Smith was addressing and seeking to remedy.

[mbperrin]

14. Certainly matches my own ten years of experience in the oilpatch.

The old "joke" was that if you fell out of a derrick, you were fired before you hit the ground, meaning you were on your own for injuries after that.

I can't help but burst into laughter whenever I see any of those earnest-sounding commercials by oil companies about the "mission" they're on.

[calimary]

18. Well, most of us know what their "mission" is.

Mission to be weasels. And even some of them recognize it. I heard on some news report that BP's early reaction was to consider mounting a PR campaign. The CEO or chairman of the board nixed the idea, saying he didn't think they'd have credibility.

[ultracase24]

16. Im sure they were

Sickening and not suprising. The owners of this platform and BP execs really need to be sitting in prison. Throw in the Board of Directors as well.

[h9socialist]

17. Sounds like the gag-orders that medical personnel at . . .

. . . Bethesda Naval Hospital were forced to sign after the autopsy on JFK. It made sure that anyone who knew the truth would eventually look like a lunatic, a liar or both, when they finally weren't so scared as to be stifled their whole life.

[Javaman]

19. "These men are told they have to sign these statements or they can't go home,"

What were they going to do? throw them overboard?

I put nothing past these corporate fucks.

[Odin2005]

20. EXTORTION! Bastards!

[madmax]

25. Ain't no hell hot enough for these bastards. nt

[FiveGoodMen]

26. Ain't no hell at all.

We should take it upon ourselves to punish them here and now.

[madmax]

27. Touche nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. Don't kid yourself. But it doesn't invalidate your second point.

[FiveGoodMen]

36. I most certainly am not kidding myself.

[City Lights]

33. Protecting the corporation is job one!

:nuke:

[MountainLaurel]

38. Absolutely appalling n/t

[DebbieCDC]

39. BP/Transocean's backpeddling like hell from this

Heard on NPR this morning that this is being "mischaracterized" -- they (supposedly) only asked their employees if they were hurt, not to sign any waivers.

Yeah, sure, what an effing crock.