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BP, Spill Victims Clash at First New Orleans Hearing on Combined Cases

Reading: BP, Spill Victims Clash at First New Orleans Hearing on Combined Cases

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BP Plc should face test-case trials over Gulf oil-spill claims within a year, lawyers for victims seeking billions of dollars in damages said in court filings.

BP and other companies being sued over the April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig should begin pretrial information exchanges next month, the lawyers told U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

“There is no reason to delay” getting cases prepared for 2011 trials, Stephen Herman, a lawyer for some of the victims, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

In its own filing, BP dismissed the victims’ push for early trials as “premature and overly ambitious.”

Barbier is overseeing about 400 oil-spill lawsuits seeking damages for everything from loss of business revenue to environmental cleanup costs. The judge is to hold a hearing today to begin organizing the litigation over the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Continue Reading at Bloomberg.

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