I reported last week on BP’s suggestion that it would appoint an independent mediator to help resolve claims relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Now, BPs hand has been forced by the Obama Administration. BP announced today that it would establish a $20 billion fund to compensate victims, and that the fund would be overseen by Ken Feinberg, who oversaw the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund. So BP’s process is likely to look much like that process, although we won’t know for some time whether the actual resources available will be sufficient to pay the claims that result. The success of the 9/11 fund was widely credited to the generous payments made. That may not be so easy this time around. In any event, it won’t be the mediation process BP initially outlined.
For anyone who questions whether volunteering to mediate can have a beneficial impact on your mediation career, you may recall, Ken Feinberg conducted the 9/11 process as a volunteer. True, he was known before that, but would we be expecting him to do the BP cases had he not volunteered to handle 9/11?
How does one get to qualify as a victim for these payouts? They’re going to have to set up some pretty serious standards there.
As soon as I heard about the fund being created, I had a feeling Ken would be called in for it.
Sean Nolon
Vermont Law School