GCCF Quick Pay Victims Might Get Another Chance In The BP Settlemeent

Wednesday, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said in a federal court filing in New Orleans, that victims of the BP Oil Spill of 2010 who had taken quick pay settlements should be allowed to participate in the BP multi billion dollar settlement process.

The quick pay claim system under the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) paid $5000 to individuals and $25,000 to businesses.

According to Hood, a large number of victims of the BP Oil Spill accepted the quick pay offers “as a result of economic duress,” because they could not wait for a lengthy settlement process.

These final payment offers included a liability release which forced the victims to give up their right to sue for actual and future losses as a result of the BP Oil Spill. In the filing,

Hood maintained that the releases were obtained illegally and should not exclude the 200,000 individuals and businesses from sharing in the settlement currently before U.S. District Judge, Carl Barbier.BP should “nullify the illegal, illegally-obtained and unconscionable” releases victims signed with the GCCF said Hood.

He is filing to void 2,600 releases which were found to have been made in error in an audit requested by the U.S. Justice Department. The audit was requested after Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and other state attorneys issued a complaint about the delays and unfair procedures in the GCCF claims payment process.

A new court-supervised administrator took over from the GCCF March 8. The case is In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, MDL-2179, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

The BP Oil Spill settlement will also exclude others from participating such as banks, betting establishments, certain plaintiffs in parts of Florida and Texas, and those affected by the moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Members of the American Shrimp Processors Association have also stated that the settlement as it stands now is biased against certain members of the shrimp industry.

The April 20, 2010 explosion aboard the BP Deepwater Horizon killed 11 oil rig workers and spilled over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The law firm of D. Miller & Associates, PLLC, located in Houston, Texas has been involved in this situation from the beginning and are now assisting hundreds of individuals and businesses with BP Oil Spill claims. They have over seven years of experience dealing with BP Oil as they have also successfully fought against the oil giant in the March 23, 2005 BP’s Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 workers.

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