BP won two rounds in its massive oil spill litigation when the federal judge overseeing the cases ruled that lead plaintiffs in property damage lawsuits cannot include racketeering claims, and that a lawsuit from BP business partner Anadarko Petroleum must be arbitrated.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier granted BP’s motion to dismiss a consolidated oil spill complaint brought under the RICO Act, calling plaintiffs’ inability to show a direct link between BP business practices and the economic damages sought the “fatal flaw in their RICO claims.”
The plaintiffs claimed that damages to property and business losses caused by the oil spill would not have happened if BP had not “defrauded government regulators in connection with the safety of its drilling operations, its ability to respond to any oil spill, and its response to the spill at the Macondo well.”
Judge Barbier ruled that a direct relationship between the alleged fraud and the plaintiffs’ injuries was required for a RICO complaint to stand.
That ruling does not affect the hundreds of other lawsuits seeking property damages, personal injury and other economic losses still pending in Barbier’s court.
