Us District Court For The Eastern District Of Louisiana News

Oil company Taylor Energy Co LLC agreed to transfer a $432 million cleanup trust account to the U.S. government and pay an additional $43 million to resolve a lawsuit over its role in the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history under a proposed deal filed in New Orleans federal court on Wednesday.The New Orleans company and federal officials filed a proposed consent decree to resolve claims arising from a 2004 incident when Hurricane Ivan caused one of Taylor's offshore drilling platforms to collapse in the Gulf of Mexico.

Transocean Ltd. announced that it has reached two separate settlement agreements, with the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee (the "PSC") and with BP Exploration & Production Inc. and BP America Production Co. ("BP"). These settlements together resolve substantially all outstanding claims against Transocean arising from the April 20, 2010, Macondo Well incident involving the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Under the terms of the agreement with the PSC, which is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana (the "Court"), Transocean will pay two classes of plaintiffs, represented by the PSC, a total of  approximately $212 million. Transocean will also pay attorneys' fees to be determined by the Court.

Under a settlement agreement with the United States, ATP Infrastructure Partners, LP (ATP-IP) will pay a $1 million civil penalty and perform corrective measures to resolve claims by the U.S. under the Clean Water Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) of unauthorized discharges of oil and chemicals from an oil platform into the Gulf of Mexico, announced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). This is the first joint judicial enforcement action involving EPA and BSEE claims in response to alleged violations of both the Clean Water Act and OCSLA. The United States’ complaint, which was filed in February 2013, in the U.S.

Halliburton Co said it reached a $1.1 billion settlement for a majority of claims against the company for its role in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The settlement, which includes legal fees, is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. It will be paid into a trust until all appeals have been resolved in three installments over the next two years, the company said. (Reporting by Swetha Gopinath in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Halliburton Energy Services Inc. has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Department of Justice announced today. A criminal information charging Halliburton with one count of destruction of evidence was filed today in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Halliburton has signed a cooperation and guilty plea agreement with the government in which Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty and admit its criminal conduct. As part of the plea agreement, Halliburton has further agreed, subject to the court’s approval, to pay the maximum-available statutory fine, to be subject to three years of probation and to continue its cooperation in the government’s ongoing criminal investigation.

BP announces US District Court’s acceptance of its plea relating to the Deepwater Horizon accident. BP announce that the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has accepted the company’s plea resolving all federal criminal charges against the company stemming from the Deepwater Horizon accident, oil spill, and response. The company offered its plea to the Court and was sentenced in connection with the agreement BP reached with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on November 15, 2012. As previously announced, BP will pay $4 billion over a period of five years and will serve a term of five years’ probation. Pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement…

Not long after specialized tank ships were developed, enabling the carriage of large quantities of oil and petroleum products, groundings, collisions, and other casualties started causing significant oil spills. In those early days, there was no financial incentive to clean up such spills. To the extent that there was a response, it was often by Good Samaritans, a term derived from a parable found in the Bible at Luke 10:25-37 about a stranger from Samaria who, with no thought of reward, came to the aid of an injured robbery victim in Judah.

BP Exploration and Production Inc. Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Manslaughter, Environmental Crimes and Obstruction of Congress Surrounding Deepwater Horizon Incident; BP Agrees to Pay a Record $4 Billion in Criminal Fines and Penalties Two Highest-Ranking BP Supervisors on Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Charged with Manslaughter and Former Senior BP Executive Charged with Obstruction of Congress. BP Exploration and Production Inc. (BP) has agreed to plead guilty to felony manslaughter, environmental crimes and obstruction of Congress and pay a record $4 billion in criminal fines and penalties for its conduct leading to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, Attorney General Eric Holder announced today.

Jones Walker LLP, on behalf of its client, SafeZone Safety Systems, LLC, has made the following announcement. SafeZone Safety Systems, LLC and Alford Safety Services, Inc. have announced a resolution of their patent infringement lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Under the terms of the settlement, SafeZone can continue using certain safe welding enclosure systems without making any payments to Alford and can use those certain systems without worry that SafeZone or its customers will be sued for infringement of Alford's patents. SafeZone acknowledged that Alford's U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,054 is valid and enforceable in view of the prior art.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued an order preliminarily enjoining the federal government for enforcing its six-month moratorium of deepwater drilling on the U.S. outer continental shelf. The court found that the administrative record on which the moratorium is based was deficient and that the specifics of the moratorium were arbitrary and capricious. Hornbeck Offshore Services v. Salazar, No. 10-1663 (E.D. La., June 22, 2010). (Source: Bryant’s Maritime News)

In a ruling issued January 4, 2002, Judge Sarah S. Vance of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana granted Babcock & Wilcox's and McDermott International, Inc.'s (NYSE: MDR) motions for summary judgement against a group of London underwriters and dismissed the declaratory judgment action filed by the insurers. The underwriters had sought to annul an agreement which acknowledges coverage for B&W's asbestos exposure and sets forth the agreements of the insurers to pay claims within that coverage. In her ruling, Judge Vance concluded that the underwriters' claims lacked a factual or legal basis. The agreement with the underwriters went into effect in April 1990…