5th Circuit Panel Vacates Ruling Affirming Claimant’s $77M Oil Spill Award

Mealey's ( March 4, 2020, 1:01 PM EST) -- NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on March 3 vacated a federal judge in Louisiana’s ruling denying BP Exploration & Production Inc.’s challenge to an oil spill claimant’s $77 million award, finding that the judge erred when not considering evidence possibly showing that the claimant’s decreased profits during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April 2010 resulted from a spike in the price of fertilizer rather than the spill (BP Exploration & Production Inc., et al. v. Claimant ID No. 100191715, No. 19-30264, 5th Cir., 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 6667)....