- After Mohawk Industries settlement, many employers could be sitting ducks for suits claiming that hiring illegal workers is RICO violation [Helman, Forbes, earlier]
- Teen tries to help child lost in store, winds up facing felony rap of false imprisonment [Greenfield]
- Federal magistrate in debt collection case: letter on law firm letterhead implies threat to sue [Legal Intelligencer]
- On “professional” class action objectors [Ted at PoL]
- Coal company claims ventilation system ordered by government regulators might have been a cause of deadly April mine explosion [WSJ]
- Senate committee approves judicial nomination of John (“Jack”) McConnell, impresario of Rhode Island lead-paint litigation; William Jacobson explains critics’ charges regarding couching of legal fee as purported hospital donation [Legal Insurrection]
- Hey, stop siphoning that oil slick, we haven’t checked your life jackets and extinguishers [GatewayPundit] Gulf oil rig registered for purposes of regulation in remote Pacific island chain [Legal Blog Watch] Richard Epstein on oil spill liability [WSJ] BP will never pay full price of accident [Popehat] Check back in 2031 to see how the litigation went [Alex Beam, Boston Globe]
- American Constitution Society holds panel discussion on Iqbal and Twombly [BLT] “Is It Too Much to Ask That a Lawsuit Be ‘Plausible’?” [Richard Samp, WLF Legal Pulse]
Posts Tagged ‘BP Transocean oil spill’
WSJ: “Lanier Seeks to Repeat Courtroom Success”
Dionne Searcey of the Wall Street Journal quotes me in a piece this morning on Texas lawyer Mark Lanier’s high hopes for the BP/Transocean Gulf spill litigation.
Securities law and spill news
“Given recent volatility in BP share price, I’m told that information related to top kill is now considered stock-market sensitive, which means it has to be managed under disclosure rules for the London and N.Y. stock exchanges,” the BP media official said in an e-mail message. “In a nutshell, that means all investors must be provided information on an equal basis. That precludes me from sending you updates as various aspects of the operation unfold.” — today’s New York Times. Readers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe securities law itself, and not merely private exchange rules, currently constrains companies’ release of stock-market-sensitive information.
P.S.: Ira Stoll, better informed than I about the background, makes the same point: “I agree with Mr. Carr that this is a problem, but his quarrel should be with the SEC and Reg FD, not with BP.”
“The BP oil spill legal primer”
Roger Parloff at Fortune answers some frequently asked questions. Last week he wrote about the supposed, but largely irrelevant, $75 million “cap,” in actuality, according to one expert, a provision of a law “designed to expand liability.” Earlier here.
P.S. From the WSJ (paywall):
Under all but the most dire situations, BP should have little trouble servicing its debts. The biggest risk to the company is a government-driven collapse, but experts doubt the U.S. government can carry out its harshest threats, such as forcing BP to pay the salaries of workers laid off because of the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling. “I cannot imagine that the U.S. government has anything close to the authority to do that” says Jim Langdon, executive partner at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
“Lawyering up”
John Steele takes a look at this interestingly pejorative phrase, which President Obama used in criticizing BP over its spill response. [Legal Ethics Forum]