BP Wants Federal Judge in Houston To Hear Oil Spill Cases

Wow, you talk about a misleading headline. BP is not requesting just any federal judge, no they are requesting a particular federal judge. Is it just me or does something sound "hinky" about this. I wish I could request a particular judge when I find myself in "hot water".

www.abc26.com...

BP Wants Federal Judge in Houston To Hear Oil Spill Cases

Associated Press ABC26 New
May 10, 2010

BP wants more than 70 lawsuits over the Gulf oil spill consolidated before a federal judge in Houston.

The oil giant is asking the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to have U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes to hear pretrial matters for all the cases.

Potential class-action lawsuits have been filed in every Gulf Coast state. Plaintiffs include commercial fishermen, business interests, property owners and others.

BP and other companies operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. It exploded April 20 and killed 11 people before sinking two days later.

Lawyers for some plaintiffs want a New Orleans judge to hear the cases.

The panel likely won't make a decision until July.

I wonder if it is the very same judge
that was used by Haliburton???

They're right down the street ya know

It would seem the pack of wild dogs
stick together at least.

Easier to track that way

reply to post by WWJFKD


I am guessing they are choosing him because of his previous work with geologists and engineers. That makes it easier for him to understand the nuances of what they will present as to the facts of the case.

A few comments on this judge I found interesting on this website:

The Robing Room: Hon. Lynn N. Hughes
Judge Hughes presented a program entitled: "Dilemmas of Trust" on May 5, 2009. The audience consisted of Geologists, Geophysicists, and Engineers. His presentation was very interesting and thought provoking. It's 45 minutes well spent listening to a very well informed Judge who has thought and taught ethics. He obviously enjoys analyzing carefully, and talking about it! His style is low key, but enthralling. I give him a 10 on content, but a 9 on elocution. Get him to speak to your group. You will be pleased.

However some of these other comments make me a bit uncomfortable:

Thinks he's charming and cute, but he's pompous and arrogant. He does not follow the rules of civil procedure, particularly with respect to discovery. He calls counsel into chambers, picks sides early, and then allows only limited discovery (sometimes just against one party). His "targeted" discovery steers everything toward the summary judgment outcome he desires. If he picks the other side, you better try to dismiss quickly.

Judge Lynn Hughes should be impeached. He lacks a judicial temperment, and shows bias to one party over another the minute the parties enter his chambers. He prefers to conduct hearings in chambers so that he can railroad the parties. He has no respect for the law or appelate courts--it's basically one capricious and usually wrong-headed man deciding how things should be. He is the worst judge I encountered in my legal career.

Lets just hope that this one is true:

Those that criticize him probably just did not get what they want out of him. But, out of all of the judges in the building, he is nearly the only one that sees the Constitution as a shield rather than a sword. He is a scholar and has a healthy distrust of government and a healthy distrust of power. And, after all, isn't this what every judge should be like?
I have tried many cases in front of him and on those that I lost, I have walked away feeling like my client was treated very fair. He has never permitted the government to take shortcuts and he gives the defendant the benefit of every doubt, understanding that this is what the Constitution requires. When he is gone, there will probably not be another who can take his place.

However, I fear the truth may lay here though:

Favors large civil firms, places his law clerks with them if able, and has a monumental ego.

This judge is mean, nasty, outrageous and obviously biased toward corporate defendants, particularly banks. Has a limited ability to think and reason, hidden by nasty screaming personal attacks on lawyers and tirades.

Anyway... Those are supposedly lawyers comments on the Judge, not mine…

Same thing happened with the post-9-11 lawsuits, which was an awesome spectacle of cronyism and cover up... and if I'm not mistaken the judge in question there in NY went to work for Rudloph "Keep Shopping" Ghouliani as his presidential campaign's legal advisor after all that. Being an apointee rather than an elected official, Federal Judges are well above public reproach and with the political clout of the petroleum industry, it's easy to see a similar farce developing to undrmine thier liability. Unless of course your underlying motive is nationalizing an industry, the age old order from chaos routine. Hell pick your own judge sounds pretty nifty, concolidating the lawsuits gives them that nice 'frivolous' flavor as well. Capitalism is a great system, if you have capital, otherwise get back to work and never mind the oil spill.

What all this really gets me to wondering though is exactly how secure are these deep water drilling platforms, I saw that Obama told us he was sending swat teams to the other rigs when this all this started, is there that much of a lack of security around these things? The scale of this disaster would surely make a tempting target of these facilities for god only knows who, and I keep waiting for them to pull an oil slickened passport from Somewhereistan out of the mess. A false flag frame job on the terrorist du jour would certainly pull some heads out of the mud and it wouldn't be BP's fault if Osama made a little infommercial on off shore drilling. So far it looks like an oil leak, and a terrible terrible accident, thank god for that, one oil soaked turban and we really could have been in a mess, remember the Maine?
Sorry about the brief off-topic rambling OP, it's my first post on the whole situation in the gulf, but yeah, letting BP hand pick their own Federal judge and consolidation of these litigations is hardly appealing. Just wait until this stuff starts hitting the shore en masse, for now I think, in most people's minds, it's still an 'off shore' event and the signifigance of this disaster and it's magnitude has yet to really sink in with people.

This is an 8 day old photo but this really hit me as to the scale of this thing...



How do you put a value on the entirety of the Gulf Coast, it's properties, industries, it's tourism value, the wildlife, the long term economical effects, the livelihoods of the people there? BP can't pay for all this, and as sad as it seems, they won't have to due to little understood limitations of libility granted to mega-corporations.
Let's ignore the scientists who warned us about deep water drilling being dangerous with current technology, use old methods and apparently faulty equipment to poke a hole in the earth somewhere so it's impossible to get to if it screws up to get oil for a foriegn company sounds like a plan of the ludicrous fat cats to me, typical. They really screwed the pooch on this one, or did they?