BP denies new accusations, denounces claimants' fraud

17th Dec 2013 16:41

Embattled oil giant BP faced fresh attacks over the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill as lawyers for compensation claimants alleged the company had tried to mislead a court hearing its legal battle over the payments.The lawyers claimed BP had omitted key details from filings made as part of its arguments against what it said were excessive or imaginary compensation claims.BP won the appeal when the US Fifth Circuit appeal court told a US district judge he was wrong to dismiss BP's complaint that the terms of the original settlement were being interpreted too generously.The appeal court told the district court to review the wording of the deal and to draw up a narrower set of definitions to exclude unfair claims.It also approved an injunction against payments made to businesses that had not suffered actual loss from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.But the steering committee of plaintiffs' lawyers has now responded by saying BP lawyers had made "material omissions" in their filings that had effectively misled the court.BP said it stood by its previous filing, adding: "The claims administrator has made awards on claims that do not meet the causation requirement of the settlement agreement, and the class has been expanded, beyond what the law allows, to include claimants whose losses are not traceable to the Deepwater Horizon accident."BP's shares closed down 8.2p at 465p in London. Meanwhile, in a separate case, BP filed a fraud suit against Mikal Watts, a Texas lawyer representing seamen claiming economic injury from the disaster.BP claimed thousands of the 40,000-plus deckhands whom Watts had claimed to represent had turned out to be "phantoms".It also said it had asked for payments from the Seafood Settlement Compensation programme, into which it has paid $2.3bn, to be suspended while its allegations are investigated.A BP spokesman said: "Mr Watts' false representations improperly inflated the value of potential claims against the Seafood Compensation Programme and resulted in an overblown $2.3bn fund."Under these circumstances, BP is not going to stand idly by and allow payments to proceed without first addressing the fraudulent conduct."Watts did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the US District Court in New Orleans, according to the Associated Press news agency.PW