BP to 'Vigorously' Defend Itself in Deepwater Horizon Civil Trial

BP insisted Tuesday that it will defend itself "vigorously" against gross negligence allegations during the Deepwater Horizon civil liability trial, which starts next Monday.

The first phase of the civil trial – to be held in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana – will be focused on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident and will examine who should be held responsible and to what degree.

"We have always been open to settlements on reasonable terms, failing which we have always been prepared to defend our case at trial. Faced with demands that are excessive and not based on reality or the merits of the case, we are going to trial," said Rupert Bondy, Group General Counsel of BP. "We have confidence in our case and in the legal team representing the company and defending our interests."

The court will ultimately determine whether BP or any other party was grossly negligent, but BP strongly disputes this charge.

"Gross negligence is a very high bar that BP believes cannot be met in this case,” said Mr Bondy. “This was a tragic accident, resulting from multiple causes and involving multiple parties. We firmly believe we were not grossly negligent."

Last November, BP and the U.S. government agreed to resolve all Federal charges and all Securities and Exchange Commission claims connected to the April 2010 disaster in return for $4.5 billion settlement paid by BP.

As part of the deal, BP agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of "misconduct or neglect of ships officers" relating to the loss of the lives of 11 people as a result of the accident. It also agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, one misdemeanour count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and one felony count of obstruction of Congress.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 resulted in the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.

A former engineer, Jon is an award-winning editor who has covered the technology, engineering and energy sectors since the mid-1990s. Email Jon at jmainwaring@rigzone.com.

Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.

View the original article here

BP to 'Vigorously' Defend Itself in Deepwater Horizon Civil Trial

BP insisted Tuesday that it will defend itself "vigorously" against gross negligence allegations during the Deepwater Horizon civil liability trial, which starts next Monday.

The first phase of the civil trial – to be held in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana – will be focused on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident and will examine who should be held responsible and to what degree.

"We have always been open to settlements on reasonable terms, failing which we have always been prepared to defend our case at trial. Faced with demands that are excessive and not based on reality or the merits of the case, we are going to trial," said Rupert Bondy, Group General Counsel of BP. "We have confidence in our case and in the legal team representing the company and defending our interests."

The court will ultimately determine whether BP or any other party was grossly negligent, but BP strongly disputes this charge.

"Gross negligence is a very high bar that BP believes cannot be met in this case,” said Mr Bondy. “This was a tragic accident, resulting from multiple causes and involving multiple parties. We firmly believe we were not grossly negligent."

Last November, BP and the U.S. government agreed to resolve all Federal charges and all Securities and Exchange Commission claims connected to the April 2010 disaster in return for $4.5 billion settlement paid by BP.

As part of the deal, BP agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of "misconduct or neglect of ships officers" relating to the loss of the lives of 11 people as a result of the accident. It also agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, one misdemeanour count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and one felony count of obstruction of Congress.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 resulted in the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.

A former engineer, Jon is an award-winning editor who has covered the technology, engineering and energy sectors since the mid-1990s. Email Jon at jmainwaring@rigzone.com.

Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.

View the original article here

How OWS Toppled Itself

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Tweet Posted on Dec 13, 2012 ms.donnalee / donna cleveland (CC BY 2.0)

Postmodern confusion about how populist movements take hold and flourish caused Occupy Wall Street to “deconstruct” itself in a frenzied obsession with nonhierarchical structures, a disdain for demands, and other trappings of “lazy, reflexive libertarianism,” author and columnist Thomas Frank writes in The Baffler.

Frank is no foe of the movement, but rather a leftist critic committed to understanding what has prevented his side from landing hammer blows in the culture wars of the last four decades. His conclusions come during a general review of the tone and bias of the multitude of books that have been written by left-wing journalists, activists and academics on the movement that began in Zuccotti Park in September 2011.

“[F]or all its intellectual attainments,” Frank writes, referring to the highly academic nature of the Occupy movement and its outreach to the public, “the Left keeps losing. It simply cannot make common cause with ordinary American people anymore.”

Additionally, in its manifestation as Occupy Wall Street, the left failed to distinguish some of its key philosophical premises from those underpinning the runaway capitalism it criticized:

[H]ere we come to the basic contradiction of the campaign. To protest Wall Street in 2011 was to protest, obviously, the outrageous financial misbehavior that gave us the Great Recession; it was to protest the political power of money, which gave us the bailouts; it was to protest the runaway compensation practices that have turned our society’s productive labor into bonuses for the 1 percent. All three of these catastrophes, however, were brought on by deregulation and tax-cutting—by a philosophy of liberation as anarchic in its rhetoric as Occupy was in reality. Check your premises, Rand-fans: it was the bankers’ own uprising against the hated state that wrecked the American way of life.

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Furthermore, Frank suggests a fundamental parallel between OWS and the tea party that, absent the backing of billionaire conservatives a la the Koch brothers, serves to diminish the impacts of any movement.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Thomas Frank at The Baffler:

The reason Occupy and the Tea Party were such uncanny replicas of one another is because they both drew on the lazy, reflexive libertarianism that suffuses our idea of protest these days, all the way from Disney Channel teens longing to be themselves to punk rock teens vandalizing a Starbucks. From Chris Hedges to Paul Ryan, every dissenter imagines that they are rising up against “the state.” It’s in the cultural DNA of our times, it seems; our rock ‘n’ roll rebels, our Hollywood heroes, even our FBI agents. They all hate the state—protesters in Zuccotti Park as well as the Zegna-wearing traders those protesters think they’re frightening. But here’s the rub: only the Right manages to profit from it.

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TAGS: john summers judith butler occupy wall street ows postmodernism tea party the baffler thomas frank



Related Entries Tea Party Favorite Jim DeMint to Quit Senate Finally: Allen West Concedes Florida Congressional Race Here Comes the Rolling Jubilee After Sandy, It’s Occupy to the Rescue

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