Louisiana Fights Threat of Sanctions in Discovery Phase of Oil-Spill Trial

http://ow.ly/7g5iS

An article by Sabrina Canfield posted on the courthousenews.com website.

This article discusses the BP oil spill litigation.  According to the article there are three phases of the litigation, and the State of Louisiana is objecting to some of the discovery requests served upon them by BP.  The State of Louisiana was not an original party to the action, and has argued against additional discovery requests, based on the cost burden, and the claim that all relevant materials have already been provided.

The author writes, " "The state objected to BP's demand that it conduct additional searches and, as the federal rules allow, argued that the expense (projected to be several millions in public funds) was not justified in light of the improbability that the state possessed additional information relevant in any way to phases one and two of the limitation action." (Brackets and parentheses in original; footnote omitted.) Louisiana says it has conducted a reasonable document search and determined that it is unlikely to have any additional information relevant to the first and second phase of the limitation trial."

The article further states, "Louisiana says it does not even have the software required for the highly specific additional searches that BP insists on. "The only other plaintiff that has been required to undertake the ESI collection and searches in the manner and at such expense as required of Louisiana is the United States. However, the potential for the State of Louisiana to have much relevant information in the context of discovery related to phases one and two of the limitation action is distinguishable from that of the United States. As an initial matter, the United States has been made a party defendant in connection with the limitation action. While Louisiana disagrees with defendants' efforts to minimize their liability for the consequences of this disaster by blaming the United States, the fact remains that the United States and its agencies are in a distinguishable position to the State of Louisiana with respect to both the regulation of deepwater drilling as well as the efforts to cap the well."