By TRAVIS LOLLER and MICHAEL PHILLIS (Associated Press)
When a deadly explosion destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 134 million gallons of crude spilled into the sea over the following three months. Tens of thousands of ordinary people were hired to help clean up the environmental damage from the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
These workers were exposed to crude oil and the chemical dispersant Corexit while collecting tar balls along the shoreline, positioning booms from fishing boats to absorb slicks, and rescuing oil-covered birds.
BP acknowledged that some members of the cleanup crews had likely become ill, and after two years, a medical claims settlement was reached. Experts viewed it as an exceptional accomplishment that would compensate workers fairly and with minimal hassle.
However, the reality has not lived up to these expectations.
The outcome has fallen well short of what was expected, leaving many workers who reported long-lasting health effects without much or any payment.
Through the settlement, BP has paid a mere $67 million to ill workers and coastal residents, a small fraction of the billions spent by the company on restitution for economic and environmental damage. The vast majority – 79% – received no more than $1,300 each.Many workers who claimed to have been impacted by the spill were compelled to file lawsuits – and their situation has been even worse. Nearly all of the around 4,800 lawsuits seeking compensation for health issues have been dismissed.
Attorneys familiar with the cases state that they are not aware of any that have gone to trial, and only one has been settled. Former boat captain John Maas received $110,000 from BP for his lung ailments in 2022, according to a confidential copy of the settlement.
The repeated failures demonstrate the extreme difficulty of proving in court that a specific illness is caused by chemical exposure, even when those chemicals are generally recognized as causes of illness.
An Associated Press investigation, which included numerous interviews with cleanup workers, attorneys, and experts, as well as a review of extensive court filings, revealed:
—A single word change in the settlement prevented thousands of workers from receiving more than the minimum of $1,300 each. They had to file individual lawsuits to receive higher compensation, but this route almost always resulted in defeat.
—Most federal judges handling these cases demanded a level of evidence connecting chemical exposure to worker illnesses that the lead government epidemiologist studying the spill believes is likely unattainable.
—Major law firms representing dozens or even thousands of workers failed their clients in various ways. After BP accused one firm of fabricating medical claims, its cases were dismissed in large numbers.
Robin Greenwald, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys who negotiated the settlement, stated that her firm has not been able to win a single medical case against BP.
“I wanted people to have their day in court and either win or lose at trial,” said Greenwald, a former federal environmental prosecutor. “Let a jury decide. … But they weren’t even given the chance to do that.”
BP chose not to provide any comments for this article, mentioning an ongoing legal case 14 years after the spill.
BECOMING ILL
Following the explosion on April 20, 2010, the spill was extraordinary. A camera broadcasted the rupture on cable news, showing the world in real time gushing oil that wouldn’t stop. Oil floated on the Gulf and washed ashore, covering plants, birds and other animals.
To disperse oil, around 1.8 million gallons of Corexit were released from planes and sprayed from boats — significantly more than previous U.S. oil spills.
The manufacturer stated it was safer than dish soap. However, laboratory research on human tissue and animals has demonstrated Corexit's ability to harm cells that protect the airways and cause scarring that narrows breathing tubes, according to Dr. Veena Antony, a University of Alabama professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine
who has researched Corexit’s impact on lung tissue. Over time, she stated, the process can make it increasingly difficult to breathe. “I genuinely believe that there was harm done and we didn’t realize the harm was being done — and now people are suffering,” said Antony, who testified as an expert witness in one suit against BP. “I would not, at the present time, put my hand even in Corexit without wearing double gloves.”
The current producer of Corexit, ChampionX, said the dispersant was pre-approved by the government for use on oil spills and the manufacturer had no role in deciding when or how to spray it.
Oil itself has long been known to cause illness. One of its toxic components is
, which can cause conditions ranging from skin irritation to cancer. benzeneBut now researchers, including Dale Sandler at the National Institutes of Health, are finding that spill workers exposed to amounts of oil assumed safe have suffered from dizziness, nausea,
lung problems heart attacks and “The exposures on average were still pretty low,” said Sandler, an epidemiologist leading the GuLFSTUDY, a major effort to quantify workers’ exposure and track health woes over years. “What surprised us is that we did see a.
wide range of health effects that were associated with these exposures.” Sandler said the study is the largest ever of an oil spill and is ongoing. “We’re looking at long-term risks like diabetes, cancer incidence,” she said.
What researchers have found so far is echoed by other studies, including one involving about 3,500 Coast Guard responders. The responders who reported breathing oil fumes
were 40% to 50% more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-like symptoms and sinus problems compared to those who said they didn’t breathe fumes. And responders who reported exposure to both oil and Corexit were more than twice as likely to suffer shortness of breath. A PROMISING SETTLEMENT
Proving to a court that a specific person’s illness was likely caused by their exposure to oil or Corexit can be difficult.
Yet the settlement for medical claims was supposed to make it easier for workers: BP would agree exposure to the spill could cause a host of
known health issues — and workers suffering from them could file claims for payment. Initially, attorneys advocating for the settlement said it could help as many as 200,000 possibly injured workers and residents. The agreement also involved $105 million from BP for local health education and free health examinations for affected workers every three years for 21 years.
But things quickly went wrong.
The third-party firm hired to process requests, Garretson Resolution Group, initially denied 78% of approximately 37,000 requests. Even after many were resubmitted, around 36% were still rejected and applicants received nothing.
Greenwald was particularly upset that her clients’ requests were repeatedly considered insufficient. “We had many meetings with Garretson’s team to try to persuade them to take a less strict approach and to focus less on shortcomings,” she said. “We fully understood the request form. We negotiated it.”
Matthew Garretson, founder of Garretson Resolution Group, defended his handling of requests in an email, stating,“it was the process the parties agreed upon and we had to administer the settlement exactly in the way the parties’ Settlement Agreement mandated.” The company was paid around $115 million to $120 million for managing requests and for the education program and medical checkup effort as of 2018, he said.
There was a bigger issue.
At the most basic level, workers could submit sworn statements confirming their medical issues and receive $1,300 — and residents could receive $900. Approximately 18,000 received that amount.
Those with longer-term illnesses who had evidence from medical tests could receive up to $60,700, or more if they had been hospitalized.
But few people had that evidence. Forty of around 23,000 with approved requests received the maximum award — less than 0.2%.
Many people lacked health insurance or easy access to a doctor and the required medical tests — a concern U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, acknowledged in a hearing.
“Speaking for south Louisiana, I know — you’re dealing with people who are probably at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Most of these people, I feel sure, likely have no health insurance,” he said.
Even when people did seek medical attention, doctors without training in treating chemical exposures often failed to link illnesses to a patient’s cleanup work in medical records, according to Greenwald.
THE NATIONS CLIENTS
The Nations Law Firm, based in Houston, represented thousands of workers like Paul Loup IV, who helped clean an oil-contaminated beach in Pascagoula, Mississippi for several months.
Loup, 68, says he now has chronic respiratory issues, making it hard to stand or speak for long periods. He resigned from his job as a procurement manager because it involved too much travel.
The firm had wanted to help clients receive more than the settlement’s $1,300 minimum, so it developed a plan to obtain required medical evidence.
It was an assembly line. Out-of-state nurse practitioners who were paid $20 per plaintiff entered medical histories based on information the law firm — not a doctor — provided. Firm-designed forms listed illnesses that paid more under the settlement — and doctors could simply circle them. The forms included a statement linking a patient’s illness to oil spill work — with a line for the doctor to sign. Doctors didn’t keep their own patient records.
Although this process might seem suspicious, the founder of the firm, Howard Nations, said in an interview that he met with the claims administrator Garretson to try to create an acceptable one.
Garretson declined the claims — not because of the process, but because of a deadline.
THE DEADLINE AND A SWITCHED WORD
The agreement was meant to make it easy to get money for illnesses that showed up quickly after being exposed to crude oil. People with diseases that can appear years later — like cancer — would have to file individual federal lawsuits.
Initial versions of the settlement defined this second group as people with a disease that “appears” after April 16, 2012. However, a later version changed the word “appears” to “diagnosed.”
In 2014, BP used that change to argue that no one diagnosed after the deadline could receive compensation for a long-term illness through the settlement, regardless of when they first got sick. Instead, they would need to sue individually to get compensated.
Judge Barbier said that is not what he was led to believe the settlement he approved would do.
“It is rather unusual … that the court would approve a settlement, a class settlement that really doesn’t settle thousands of claims and requires them to file another lawsuit,” Barbier said at a 2014 hearing. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like much of a settlement.”
BP attorneys said any other interpretation would invite fraud, allowing opportunistic law firms to pay for a medical diagnosis after the deadline to get a settlement claims payout. They also said the word change was requested by the workers’ own attorneys, and Stephen Herman, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs’ attorneys, testified they didn’t recall how it happened.
Despite his doubts, Barbier said he had to follow the settlement language.
His ruling forced thousands of workers out of the relatively easy administrative claims process into federal courts throughout the South.
THE FEDERAL LAWSUITS
The ruling was devastating for Nations clients whose only option was to file federal lawsuits.
After BP attorneys alleged in Mississippi federal court that the firm manufactured medical diagnoses, Nations agreed to dismiss its cases by the dozens. In an interview, Nations did not deny BP’s allegations but said the cases were unwinnable without an adequate expert witness.
Loup, the former beach cleanup worker, said he didn’t know until informed by a reporter last year that his case had been dismissed years earlier. “I call (Nations) every six months or so … and they’ve just said it’s going to take some time,” he said.
Another Nations client was Jeff Herring, the deckhand of Maas, the boat captain believed to be the only person whose case reached a settlement.
When their boat was sprayed with Corexit, Herring started throwing up so badly an ambulance was called to pick him up. Although released from the hospital after a few days, he developed chronic sinus and respiratory problems, according to his lawsuit.
Months later, a doctor at an oil spill medical station referred him to a specialist, and he was hospitalized again, said Herring, now 39. An X-ray found spots on his lungs, and he was supposed to go to New Orleans for further testing but never did.
He said he couldn't stay in a hospital for another two weeks because he needed to get back to work, and he didn't have insurance to cover the hospital bills.
Herring mentioned that he didn't have insurance and received only about $8,000 from the claims process, which was not sufficient to cover the hospital bills.
Herring's case, along with 235 others, was dismissed in 2020, but he claims he was not informed about it.
Howard Nations stated that the firm kept clients updated on their cases, and although the individual lawsuits were dismissed, he plans to present new arguments to Judge Barbier.
EXPERT WITNESSES
Other law firms encountered a different challenge:
Employees filing individual lawsuits must prove that their illnesses were most likely caused by their exposure to a significant amount of oil or dispersant.
The experts for the employees relied on studies from the National Institutes of Health and the Coast Guard, which indicated that people exposed to oil and Corexit were more likely to develop certain illnesses.
However, BP's experts argued that workers needed to demonstrate exactly how much oil and dispersant they had inhaled or ingested, and that it was enough to cause their sickness.
Greenwald, the attorney involved in developing the settlement, mentioned that meeting such a standard is nearly impossible, as it's difficult for individuals to testify about the specific details of their exposure.
Most judges have supported BP, rejecting the experts for the employees as unreliable and effectively closing the cases.
Sandler, the NIH epidemiologist, mentioned that their researchers made extensive efforts to gather data on exposure, unlike anything done before. She expressed doubt that they would be able to meet the standards set by the court for what qualifies as evidence.
It can also be challenging to find an expert witness who is knowledgeable about the science but does not have a conflict of interest due to their work with the oil industry.
The Falcon Law Firm enlisted Jerald Cook, a retired Navy physician with training in occupational and environmental medicine, as an expert in numerous cases. However, judges repeatedly rejected him as BP pointed out flaws in his professional history and work.
In a deposition, a BP attorney asked Cook if it was fair to say that his report didn't adequately consider evidence that contradicted his conclusions, to which Cook agreed.
Cook declined to provide a comment, and Falcon did not respond to requests for comment.
Some law firms that handled hundreds of cases struggled under the pressure, asking judges for more time so their overwhelmed experts could produce reports.
LOOKING FORWARD
It's not completely over.
The Downs Law Group, which lost numerous cases against BP, is appealing in the 5th and 11th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, hoping that they will decide that federal district judges have misinterpreted the level of proof required for toxic exposure cases. One of those judges mentioned that the issue is ripe for the Supreme Court to resolve.
Jason Clark, an attorney at Downs, stated that it has broader implications than just the BP oil spill, emphasizing that if the burden of proof is too high for any plaintiff to meet, then many exposed individuals will never receive justice.
In the meantime, Downs is speaking to many people who want to sue over illnesses like cancer that showed up years after the spill, according to Clark.
Sandler, the NIH epidemiologist, mentioned that most judges require strong evidence, making it difficult for people to win their cases.
Sandler believes that ultimately the oil spill caused people to become ill. Even though courts may see it differently, from a public health perspective, the oil spill did make people sick.
The Walton Family Foundation supports the Associated Press for their water and environmental policy coverage. The AP is fully responsible for all content. To read more of AP’s environmental coverage, visit
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Many individuals who helped clean up after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico claim they became ill. A legal agreement was supposed to compensate them, but it did not work out as planned. Most only received the lowest amount and had to file separate lawsuits to get more. Attorneys familiar with the situation say only one person has received a settlement after suing, and it required extraordinary luck and effort. Plaintiff experts were dismissed by judges, BP opposed every case, and sometimes lawyers did not properly represent their clients. This entire complicated process has left those who responded to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history in a difficult situation. https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
