A 90-year-old maritime law gets BP off the hook for workers killed on the Deepwater rig

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.slate.com/id/2257213

Screwed if by Sea

A 90-year-old maritime law gets BP off the hook for workers killed on the Deepwater rig.
By Stephanie MencimerPosted Wednesday, June 16, 2010, at 1:43 PM ET

Read Slate's complete coverage of the BP oil spill: http://www.slate.com/id/2256255/

After a BP refinery in Texas exploded in 2005, killing 15 workers and injuring scores more, the oil giant paid $1.6 billion in settlements to employees and their families. But the families of the workers killed on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico probably won't receive a similar windfall. That's because the Deepwater rig is legally considered an oceangoing vessel and was more three nautical miles offshore at the time of the accident. As a result, the families of the dead workers can only sue BP and its contractors under a 90-year-old maritime law, the Death on the High Seas Act, which severely limits liability. In some cases, BP could get away with shelling out sums as paltry as $1,000.

Gordon Jones, a mud engineer killed on the Deepwater rig, left behind a pregnant wife who had quit her job to stay home with their 2-year-old son. But thanks to DOHSA, the most BP could owe them is the equivalent of Gordon's salary over his working life, minus what he would have paid out in taxes and personal expenses. So if Gordon made $60,000 a year for the next 30 years, BP could owe the family less than a million dollars.

The math works out even worse for workers without dependents. Jones' brother Chris testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the other Deepwater workers who was killed was single and childless. That means his family would only be entitled to recover funeral expenses under DOHSA. But because his body was never recovered after the explosion, the funeral costs will be lower. BP could end up paying his family as little as $1,000 for their loss.

Chris and his father Keith have pleaded with Congress to fix the law so that any employer can be held accountable for negligence—regardless of whether an employee dies on land or at sea. Last week, Senate Judiciary chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced legislation that would do just that.

But Leahy's bill faces an ugly political fight. And giant oil corporations—the most obvious potential opponents of such legislation—may not even have to flex their lobbying muscle. There's another powerful industry with an interest in doing BP's dirty work to preserve the status quo. That would be cruise line operators—and when it comes to Beltway battles, the cruise lobby is no Love Boat.

FULL story at link.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. It would be nice if these writers would find an admiralty lawyer before...

shooting their mouths off.

Of course BP will petition for limitation of liability, and try to shield the company with an in rem judgment. Everybody does that as a matter of course, and insurers demand it-- BP could be petitioning for limitation to the value of the wrecked rig.

But, the Supreme court has already addressed limitaion, mentioning the Jones Act, and for many years courts have refused to allow limitation when an unseaworthy condition exists. The Supremes have already spoken and even Scalia agreed, and wrote the opinion, that negigence and unseaworthiness are pretty much the same thing.