Abstract
The mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) Deepwater Horizon sank off the coast of Louisiana on 20 April 2010 after a massive explosion and fire. At the time, there were 126 crew members on board. Eleven were killed in the explosion and many were injured. The drill pipe and riser connecting the MODU to the undersea oil and gas reservoir fractured and oil and gas began to pour from the subsea well into the ocean. The blowout continued for three months until the well was finally capped on 15 July 2010. The oil caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats, closed down the rich fishing grounds off the coast of Louisiana and had a significant impact on tourism along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The liability issues raised by the blowout are very complex. Hundreds of lawsuits have been commenced in both federal and state courts against B.P., the lessee of the well site, Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton, the contractor in charge of cementing the riser pipe that failed, Cameron International, the manufacturer of the blowout preventer that failed, and others. The federal cases have been consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans.1 They will all be heard by one judge, Judge Carl Barbier. Many cases continue in state court.
The principal cause of the complexity attending the liability issues is the fact that, unlike Australia and New Zealand, the United States does not have a single common law. Each state has its own common law. Louisiana, the state most badly affected by the blowout, is a mixed jurisdiction, as it also has a civil code. Although the law varies considerably from state to state, maritime cases are governed by federal law: either Acts of the federal U.S. Congress or uniform general maritime law. There is no federal common law except for general maritime law. The constitutional and federalism issues raised by a case like the Deepwater Horizon are almost bizarrely complex. This article will give an overview of the main liability issues.