Lawyers lining up for class-action suits over oil spill

[cal04]

Source: Washington Post

On April 21, with the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig still in flames, John W. Degravelles and a group of other lawyers sued for damages. In the first of at least 88 suits filed since the disaster, they were seeking compensation for the widow of a Transocean worker who went missing and is presumed dead.

It marked the beginning of legal action that is spreading as inexorably as the oil that threatens the wildlife and economy of five states along the Gulf of Mexico.

"On Thursday, I could smell the oil and, being a toxic tort lawyer, I realized that the fact that you're smelling something means that you're inhaling something," Stuart Smith, a New Orleans lawyer, said this month when breezes were carrying the scent of the oil slick toward the city. Smith, who has sued major oil companies before, immediately contacted toxicologists and air monitors to start doing tests that could be used as evidence.

The law firms now assembling are members of the all-star team of plaintiffs' attorneys. They have experience suing big companies over asbestos, tobacco, oil company waste, breast implants and Chinese drywall. They have represented Ecuadoran shrimp farmers and New York lobstermen, patients who have swallowed Vioxx and investors who lost money on shares of Enron. And their ranks include the likes of Erin Brockovich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and partners of the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/16/AR2010051603254.html?hpid=topnews

[ZombieHorde]

1. Good. nt

[blueknight]

2. class action suits are just horrible

the plantiffs end up with next to nothing, and the lawyers get rich

[izquierdista]

4. At least the con men

Leave you with a bag of newspaper strips.

[w4rma]

5. But the bad guys get punished (hopefully). (nt)

[Webster Green]

3. I think I'm starting to smell it in Northern California.

Where do I sign up? :*

[Doctor_J]

6. These wouldn't be neccessary if the DoJ meted out real justice

If the government had seized all of BP's assets like they should have, this type of bizarre carcass-stripping would be a non-starter. The reason we have so many lawsuits in this country is because the government won't punish corporations regardless of the scale of their crimes.