September 17, 2014

BP Lawyers Use Old-School Trick; Judge Not Amused

Source: NPR

Back in school, did you ever fudge the spacing on a report to meet the teacher's page-length requirement? Lawyers representing oil company BP tried something similar in a recent court filing connected to the company's 2010 drilling rig accident and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier was not amused. In his ruling Monday, Barbier issued an order and then reminded BP's lawyers that their brief was supposed to be limited to 35 pages, double-spaced:

"BP's counsel filed a brief that, at first blush, appeared just within the 35-page limit. A closer study reveals that BP's counsel abused the page limit by reducing the line spacing to slightly less than double-spaced. As a result, BP exceeded the (already enlarged) page limit by roughly six pages."

"The Court should not have to waste its time policing such simple rules — particularly in a case as massive and complex as this. ... Counsel's tactic would not be appropriate for a college term paper. It certainly is not appropriate here."


Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/16/349006089/bp-lawyers-use-old-school-trick-judge-not-amused

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Really BP? I used to think of Oil corporations as these huge, evil, money grubbing enterprises. As time has gone on since the Deepwater Horizon, I'm more and more inclined to believe that there wasn't any brilliant/evil plot behind the disaster.. just blatant, and gross incompetence. This is pathetic, and I'm glad they were caught... even if it is by a judge who seems to be totally in their pocket.