Legal News

Ruling on Gross Negligence Renders BP $100 Million Richer

By Ashby Jones

Question: What’s the difference between “negligence” and “gross negligence?”

Answer: About $100 million.

That was the little torts/damages lesson learned on Tuesday by parties to a suit filed in the wake of a 2007 accident at a Texas oil refinery.

The federal judge on the case, Kenneth Hoyt, threw out a $100 million punitive damages award against BP, ruling that the plaintiffs in the case — 10 workers who had sued BP for alleged injuries sustained after the release of unidentified toxic substances at BP’s Texas City plant in 2007 — had failed to prove BP had been grossly negligent. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the AP story.

At the same time, however, Judge Hoyt ruled that the British oil giant could be held responsible for actual damages sustained by injured workers, after ruling that the jury could have found that the company was liable for simple negligence.

The ruling largely overturns a jury verdict, rendered in December, awarding each of the contract workers a total of $326,000 in compensatory damages for their injuries, plus $10 million each in punitive damages. Actual damages awarded per worker range from about $6,000 to more than $244,000.

“The nature of refinery work is that workers are subject to a variety of toxic odors at all times,” Judge Hoyt wrote in his ruling. “Both the defendant, the employees and contractors are fully aware of the potential hazards that exist in a refinery.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).