Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog

As a personal injury attorney, medical doctor and concerned environmentalist I have decided to team up with my very good friend, Spencer Aronfeld of the Aronfeld Law Firm. Today we are going to the Gulf Coast to assess for ourselves first hand the impact of this environmental catastrophe.

What will follow over the next few days will be dispatches from the front lines; first hand cataloging of the damage. We are hopeful that with pictures and video of the devastating damage we can start a discussion and have people think about the downside of oil.

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Driven deep into Gulf Coast waterways by wind and seasonally high tides, the spreading oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon accident could cause serious ecological and wildlife-health consequences long after signs of surface damage have been erased.

Independent studies of several major oil spills, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, show that oil often reaches farther into tidal estuaries than previously thought and can soak into shoreline sediment where it can continue to affect fish and wildlife for 10 or 20 years.

In the aftermath of offshore oil spills in Alaska, Massachusetts and Spain, researchers discovered long-term effects on shellfish, crabs, seabirds, whales and sea otters years after the accidents. The problems ranged from altered blood chemistry and higher levels of stress hormones to erratic behavior, contaminated eggs and long-term population declines.

Read the full story here at the Wall Street Journal

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Frank Campo thinks the oil spill approaching the marshes east of New Orleans may destroy his community.

Campo, who runs Campo’s Marina in St. Bernard Parish’s Shell Beach, says the response to the spill is too little and too late to prevent economic disaster for the commercial and recreational fishermen who earn a living from the coast.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

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We blogged on Thursday about the initial lawsuits getting filed over the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Those suits, however, are likely to turn out to represent just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the legal trouble likely facing a host of defendants, including BP, Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, and others.

Read the full WSJ story here.

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As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast, fears continued to grow that the leak from the seabed oil well could spiral out of control. One official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the oil flow could grow from the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day to “an order of magnitude higher than that.”
BP officials said they did everything possible, and a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead.

Read the full New York Times.

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BP PLC said Friday that it would honor all “legitimate claims” for damages stemming from the Louisiana oil spill, as the company’s stock continued to fall amid investors’ concerns about potential litigation and a total clean-up bill that could run well into the billions of dollars.

The disaster was set in motion when the Deepwater Horizon, which had been leased by BP to drill a well in the Gulf of Mexico, caught fire and sank, killing 11 crew members. BP’s efforts to stop the flow of oil from the well have failed.

The company is spending about $6 million a day on the clean-up, but those costs are expected to escalate with the oil making landfall. Analyst estimates of BP’s total costs stemming from the disaster range from around $2.5 billion to $8 billion. BP says it is self-insured.

Read the full Wall Street Article Here.

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British Petroleum downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at an offshore rig that exploded, causing the worst U.S. oil spill in decades along the Gulf Coast and endangering shoreline habitat.

In its 2009 exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well, BP suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill and serious damage to beaches, fish and mammals.

At least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled so far since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers, according to Coast Guard estimates.

Read the full AP story here.

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It’s looking much more likely that the oil spill from a BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico will have political ramifications in the U.S.

The situation in the Gulf deteriorated again as the U.S. Coastguard revealed that oil is gushing from the damaged well five times faster than previously thought. A change in prevailing winds means the growing oil slick is likely to reach land on Friday, despite BP’s massive efforts to contain it.

Read the full Wall St Story here.

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