With trial pending, BP asks judge to cull experts

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BP Gulf oil spill

NEW ORLEANS — With a trial over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill looming, BP PLC is asking a federal judge to block two plaintiffs’ experts from testifying about an alleged disregard for safety throughout the energy company that those experts say led to the nation’s largest offshore oil spill.

BP’s legal maneuver to limit the two California experts from testifying about the alleged lack of a safety culture at BP was made public Monday after U.S. Magistrate Sally Shushan unsealed 30 court motions to limit and block expert testimony. BP filed 17 of the motions, seeking to block expert testimony on a number of issues behind what happened to cause BP’s well to blow out.

The trial begins Feb. 27 in federal court in New Orleans. It will determine the division of responsibility for the disaster that began with the explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010, which killed 11 men about 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast.

Besides BP, other companies involved in the spill — including Cameron International, Halliburton Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Co. — and the Justice Department filed their own motions to block experts from testifying at trial. The sparring parties are seeking to block testimony about a slew of issues involving how the well was cemented, how drilling fluids were poured into it and how pressure tests were interpreted. The trial is expected to rely heavily on expert testimony.

But BP’s attempt to block Robert Bea, a University of California-Berkeley engineer, and William Gale, a California-based fire and explosion investigator and consultant, from testifying is pivotal for the plaintiffs’ case, which charges that BP was reckless in its actions. The plaintiffs and federal and state governments are seeking to get U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to find BP grossly negligent, a finding that could result in billions of dollars in fines.

In pretrial depositions and in an expert report, Bea and Gale argued that BP showed a disregard for safety throughout the company.

Their testimony — if it is allowed at trial — would be expected to paint BP as a cavalier company that has failed to learn lessons from previous disasters — including the 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas, that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others and a major spill in 2006 from a BP pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

In its filing, BP charged that Bea and Gale’s report was “the opposite of good science.” BP charged the two experts with focusing solely on BP and analyzing documents and evidence “spoon-fed to them” by plaintiffs lawyers. BP accused the experts of ignoring the “safety culture of the other parties” involved in the spill, in particular Transocean Ltd., the drilling company running operations aboard the Deepwater Horizon.

BP said Bea and Gale failed to take into consideration a report by Lloyd’s Register that was done one month before the explosion. Lloyd’s report found serious fatigue problems with Transocean’s decision to lengthen workers’ hitches aboard the Deepwater Horizon by one week, from 14 days to 21 days. Lloyd’s specializes in assessing safety aboard maritime facilities.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers declined to comment on BP’s filing. Gale did not return a telephone call seeking comment. Bea said he was unable to comment due to a confidentiality agreement with plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Attempts to exclude experts from testifying at trial are standard.

But Ed Sherman, a Tulane University law professor, said he would be surprised if Barbier excluded experts because this will be a non-jury trial.

“My guess is that most of them will qualify,” Sherman said.

He said Barbier will want to hear what the experts have to say and that he will discern unreliable expert testimony.

20 Comments

  1. Nuffsaid500

    If memory serves, the CEOs of Exxon, Shell, Chevron and Conoco-Phillips testified before Congress, under oath, regarding the BP Macondo well. These industry experts testified that the BP Macondo well architecture and drilling/completion procedures were sub-standard.

    Perhaps the public interest would be served, for these gentlemen to repeat themselves, to the court.

    Your Honor, we should like to add several expert witnesses, to rebut the BP challenge of these expert witnesses …

    Should not basic fairness, allow the expert witnesses to defend their reputations and their work? Should not the plaintiffs be allowed to further ‘qualify’ their expert witnesses, once challenged?

    #1
  2. CAD1936

    BP lawyers are probably filing these motions to build up the fees they are charging BP. They well know their motions will be overruled as these witnesses will be subject to cross examination. They are also trying to get the first argument they intend to make on this matter.

    They will probably move to exclude the fact that they are and have been paying one of their own witnesses $100K a month.

    They are depending partially on the Lloyd’s inspector’s findings of a month before the blow out. I wonder if they were able to get the Deepwater Insurance Conpanies’ findings made about a year before the blow out suggesting a three month moratorium on such drilling to catch up on maintenance and training or if those reports still exist. Of course BP refused to go along with such a moratorium.

    #2
  3. pammie

    These people are scam artists and murderers. Do NOT eat anything out of that Gulf unless you want to die from some disease you are sure to get. My belief this was done on purpose to convince others of their clean energy plan. Just like allowing mines to cave in and letting the miners die. This is about rich people above the law. And they always will be.

    #3
  4. Lionhead

    This will be the largest verdict in the history of American jurisprudence. BP is about to get bent over.

    #4
  5. Trail_Tramp

    CAD please provide a link to your often cited “Deepwater Insurance Conpanies” call for a drilling moratorium. I’ve never been able to find anything about it on the web. Furthermore, the rig insurance coverge would be on Transoceans, not BP.

    #5
  6. Nuffsaid500

    Pammie,

    Sorry, but the Gulf of Mexico has a flow from west to east and then out into the Atlantic Ocean as the ‘Gulf Stream’.

    Let the Brits worry about the dispersants and the remaining oil. Fish and Chips in Liverpool may not require as much oil to fry. And the dishes may be easier to wash.

    The Texas shrimp, flounder, mahi-mahi, tuna and all the rest is … Yum Yum. As a matter of fact, I would recommend Texas seafood over the nuclear waste seafood from the North Pacific. The Japanese have adopted VERY stringent radiation standards for their food, for obviously good reasons. So Texas fishermen should be getting a good price for their fish this year … and the next ten thousand or so years.

    Please pass the Texas Jumbo Fried Shrimp and Oysters!

    #6
  7. ntangle

    Sure glad I’ve never been culled. That doesn’t sound very pleasant.

    #7
  8. Mortimer Hotclaw

    BP charged the two experts with focusing solely on BP and analyzing documents and evidence “spoon-fed to them” by plaintiffs lawyers. – bp is in trouble, lots of trouble.

    #8
  9. CAD1936

    T_T, The reference to the moratorium was found in a trade magazine, the name of which I believe was “Oil and Gas”, As I recall it was mentioned in an article in reference to the fact that the rig owners were overstating the loss of employment by the field workers in La. and the fact that only several of them had applied for lost wages from a special fund set up to handle such matters with a deadline of only a month left to apply. The lawyers on both sides are aware of the article and its implications. I didn’t save it. If I had known your interest I would have saved a reference to it but since I gave you the information before, I thought you may have satisfied yourself.

    #9
  10. Nuffsaid500

    The USA allows 5 Times as much radioactivity in our seafood, as the NEW Japan standards. Canada allows 10X as much as Japan.

    So, naturally, contaminated seafood from the North Pacific will be headed AWAY from Japan and toward Canada and the USA. Plus, seafood caught along the Aleutian Islands, Southern and Western Alaska, and the Marshall Islands will increasingly be TOXIC WASTE for a long, long, long-long time.

    The point is, the Western Gulf of Mexico is full of some VERY good seafood. Sorry about Eastern Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and ‘Cuber’. After that the deliberate, willful BP oil-dump will have dispersed. England will never receive the benefit of the BP (formerly British Petroleum) actions in the Gulf of Mexico.

    #10
  11. Nuffsaid500

    This Trail Tramp feller is kinda interesting … always kinda plugged in with and for BP. The TT is sort-of BP’s ‘Best Friend Forever’ BFF on the Houston Chronicle.

    So, when he casually asked, about a reference for the voluntary drilling moratorium proposed some time ago …

    I expected, checked and searched …

    Sure enough, those links are now GONE from the regular search engines. All that is required is a few bucks to buy, the top thousand hits or all the hit at the top of the page. Google and those other search engine guys are in this for the bucks.

    So, perhaps for some obscure reason, BP wants to pretend there was never an industry discussion of a voluntary drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico.

    But there was such a proposal. And the links will resurface soon enough. What BP can pay to ‘vanish’, ‘Big Red’ can pay to re-appear.

    Fun and Games on the Internet.

    #11
  12. Trail_Tramp

    Nuffy, I’m not pro-BP, but I am pro-oil & gas. I understand how important oil & gas is to our national security. I don’t have anything against green-energy. Build all the wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars you want. You will still be decades from being able to replace what oil and gas will be able to provide for the US today.

    #12
  13. Trail_Tramp

    So all the links to this so called voluntary drilling moratorium have suddenly vanished? And you guys believe that the nefarious BP is behind the conspiracy? Sounds more like Fun and Games in loony liberal land.

    #13
  14. Nuffsaid500

    TT

    Well, as a matter of fact, LOTS of churchfolk, oil-hands, hunters, fishermen, seamen, Republicans, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, working men, schoolmarms and lots of other REGULAR Texas folk …

    Happen to think that BPSux, and that BP has set up more than their share of nasty little deathtraps in and about Texas.

    Just saying …

    #14
  15. Nuffsaid500

    TT,

    Oh and nope, we could giveahoot if those links are gone. Most of us are used to the ‘for sale’ nature of search engines. When it matters,we learned long ago to ARCHIVE what we want.

    Just gatekeepers trying to sell publicly available information. No big deal, one way or the other.

    Heck, I have seen adds to ‘increase visibility’ on search engines. It is part of their business model, as is selling the list of top searches.

    No big deal, just a fact of life.

    BP IS nefarious, but this kind of stuff is trivial.

    #15
  16. Indianpaintbrush

    Oh my, I see many tin foil hats in here….
    That said…. do not BP and the others use in-house attorneys? I know for a fact that one of the companies that had men on that rig is using its own attorneys, and if so then these motions have absolutely nothing to do with billing hours.
    Notice the third or so paragraph down states that all parties involved have filed motions… but that wouldn’t make for a good headline, would it?

    #16
  17. Trail_Tramp

    @Nuffsaid500 “Most of us are used”. Fredian slip about liberals?

    #17
  18. Nuffsaid500

    Right Flank

    Sigmund Freud was a fraud.

    I am the Right Flank for conservatives.

    Everybody is to the left of me.

    RIGHT, in every sense of the word.

    #18
  19. Trail_Tramp

    I’d say you are so far to the right, you’ve looped back around to the other side.

    #19
  20. Nuffsaid500

    Culling the Herd

    All the BP killings, explosions, lost-time-accidents, oil spills, bribery, wars, lawsuits, fines and pending criminal charges are add up collectively to ‘culling the herd’.

    It is probably time to knock BP in the head, like a sick heifer. BP is a ‘cutter -canner’ (Mexican-Number-2) grade, as far the meat of the matter.

    Perhaps a few criminal charges, fines and BIG damage lawsuits, will ‘get their attention’. I have my doubts. BP should probably be banned from drilling, production and pipeline activities in these United States and our territorial waters. They have just not done a good enough job to stay in business.

    Cull the herd!

    #20