The Upcoming Trial in the Deep Horizon Litigation

NPR has a story with lots of interesting quotes. My favorite:

“There’s only one place where a waitress or a shrimper can be on equal footing with a company the size of BP, and that’s a courtroom,” says Rhon Jones, with the Montgomery, Ala., law firm Beasley Allen. Jones is part of the plaintiffs’ steering committee, a group of lawyers coordinating the case.

The story raises a series of important questions about the purpose of litigation and settlement.  Is it best for society to funnel cases outside that system as in the BP and 9/11 cases? What is the use of a trial – to apportion liability? get to the truth? allocate damages? figure out difficult causation questions?  Are different plaintiffs to be treated differently – for example the waitress and the shrimper above as opposed to the attorneys general of the affected states?

Edited to add: I just saw the blog post by George Conk about the potential ineligibility of many plaintiffs who did not file claims with the compensation fund.  See here for more analysis.

ADL