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Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill 10 Years Later: Trends Still Shaping the Legal Industry Today

By James Neath

April 30, 2020

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I awoke the morning of Wednesday, April 21, 2010, to another beautiful sunny day in Houston ⁠— until I turned on the TV news and saw a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico engulfed in fire. My heart sank moments later when I was told that the rig was working for BP, my employer.

As BP’s associate general counsel in charge of global litigation, I had lived through a number of significant legal crises: the largest oil spill ever on Alaska’s North Slope, a multiple fatality refinery explosion, the near sinking of one of the world’s largest oil rigs, a commodity trading scandal, among others. I knew as I watched the rig burn that the Deepwater Horizon incident would generate many years of litigation. In the years following BP’s merger with Amoco, many observers doubted that any single legal matter could threaten the financial health of the group. That was about to change.

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About the Author

James Neath
Industry Expert
I am Jim Neath. I assist corporate legal departments and law firms with strategic planning for litigation readiness, investigations, and related discovery processes for responding to complex matters such as multi-party high-stakes lawsuits.