Stephen Herman Serves as Co-Lead Class Counsel in $7.8 Billion BP Deepwater Horizon Settlement

On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven workers and triggered the largest accidental marine oil spill in United States history. Over the following 87 days, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil discharged into the Gulf, fouling coastlines from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle and devastating fishing, tourism, and coastal industries across five states.

The scale of economic harm was immediate and enormous. Commercial fishermen could not work their grounds. Seafood processors lost their supplies. Charter boat captains, hotel operators, and waterfront businesses watched their revenues collapse. By the time BP capped the well in July 2010, thousands of claims had been filed and federal litigation was consolidating rapidly before U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Judge Barbier appointed Stephen J. Herman of Herman Herman Katz and Cotlar as Plaintiffs Liaison Counsel, one of the two attorneys designated to manage all communications between the plaintiffs' side and the court throughout the multidistrict litigation. Herman also served alongside James Parkerson Roy as Co-Lead Class Counsel, the pair responsible for directing negotiations with BP on behalf of the economic and property-damage class.

Those negotiations produced a landmark agreement announced in March 2012. BP agreed to pay an uncapped sum estimated at $7.8 billion to resolve economic-loss and property-damage claims from Gulf Coast residents and businesses. The settlement covered claimants in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and portions of eastern Texas and western Florida. The class included commercial fishermen, oyster leaseholders, charter boat operators, property owners, and a wide range of coastal businesses whose livelihoods depended on Gulf waters or Gulf tourism.

Judge Barbier issued a 125-page ruling on December 21, 2012, finding the settlement 'fair, reasonable and adequate' and granting final approval. More than 100,000 businesses and individuals were covered by the agreement. The economic class settlement was separate from a medical settlement negotiated for cleanup workers and from the criminal and regulatory penalties BP paid to the federal government.

The $7.8 billion figure represented only the economic class component. Including criminal fines of $4.5 billion announced in November 2012 and other civil resolutions, BP's total Deepwater Horizon liabilities ultimately ran into the tens of billions of dollars.