It was announced last week that BP would pay out $18.7 billion to settle all federal state and local government claims stemming from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in 2010, including those from a number of local jurisdictions. Kirk Pinkerton attorney Bill Robertson represents Sarasota, Bradenton Beach and Tampa in government actions against BP. SRQ spoke to him about the settlement.

How involved were attorneys for local jurisdictions in figuring this settlement amount? We were not directly involved in any of the negotiations. That was done at a higher level. It had been anticipated this would go on for a number of years. These settlement negotiations spun from multi-district litigation. A panel came up with a formula to calculate losses by all municipal claimants, which were settled all at once in a very closed and private negotiation between all parties. This global settlement covers all the municipal governments impacted from the Deepwater Horizon explosion. It’s not about the class action claims; those continue. This simply settles state and municipal government claims that arose as result of spill in 2010, including from Sarasota and Bradenton. As far as the current order, it does not allow local governments to talk about specific amounts. In the grand scheme, it will be a very fair number. Sarasota and Bradenton Beach will be part of global conversations.

Kirk Pinkerton represents hundreds of claimants with more than $45 million in combined damages and losses. Most of that is from businesses and individuals. Where do things stand with all the claims? The bulk of the claims are 200,000-plus class action claimants who still have not been paid anything. That is still our frustration. We have claimants who were hammered, including some who went out of business, and they have yet to see a dime with all the appeals filed by BP. This [settlement with governments] is a start but it does nothing to help those class-action claimants. The period for making any claims expired on June 8 this year, so all claims filed by anybody are now in the process. How long it will take to pay them? I don’t know. There is a great amount of work still to be done.