On May 13, 2020, the USCG published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking advising of its intent to amend and update the regulations governing financial responsibility for environmental pollution under OPA 90 and CERCLA. Triggering these changes include a desire to close compliance gaps that cause untimely responses to oil spills due to operators failings to
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a Circuit Split, holding that punitive damages are not recoverable to a seaman under an unseaworthiness claim. The Court, in a 6-3 ruling, sided with the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s analysis under McBride and reversed the U.S. Ninth Circuit’s decision in Dutra v. Batterton. The Court followed Townsend,
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Writ of Certiorari in the Dutra v. Batterton case, setting the stage for a resolution of the Circuit Split between the US Fifth and Ninth Circuits on whether punitive damages are available to a seaman on an unseaworthiness claim. A more thorough review of the Dutra case
The modern day contract is a direct result of trial and error. Generally speaking, transactional lawyers try to negotiate “bulletproof” contracts providing exactly what their client wants or needs. Despite their best efforts, litigators in later disputes try their level best to find the “errors” in those contracts that could benefit their client. Then the
Contractual indemnities are important and valuable in the oil patch. When they are enforceable, they have the potential to end litigation completely or at least the financial burden for a particularly well-positioned indemnitee. But, with “anti-indemnity” statutes in play in several jurisdictions (including Louisiana), the enforceability of these indemnity provisions rely (barring exceptions) on the
On February 12, 2017, a fishing charter boat, the M/V SUPER STRIKE, carrying several paying customers collided with an offshore service boat, the M/V MISS IDA, during a fishing trip. Claims were asserted by the passengers against both vessels and operators in their respective limitation suits. Recently, dispositive motions were filed against the claims asserted
Recently, the US Fifth Circuit addressed three maritime tenets in the same case: McCorpen defense, unseaworthiness, and regulatory governance. While these issues can be rather straightforward in the typical case, the facts in Thomas v. Hercules Offshore Services, LLC (5th Cir. March 2, 2018) provided an interesting review of each. The specific issues addressed in
For nearly 30 years, district courts within the US 5th Circuit have evaluated whether maritime or state law applies to oil and gas service contracts using the 6-factor test from Davis & Sons, Inc. v. Gulf Oil Corp., 919 F.2d 313 (5th Cir. 1990). The Davis factors focused mainly on the nature of the
The US Fifth Circuit recently published an opinion in Feld Motor Sports, Inc. v. Traxxas, LP, recognizing that it had jurisdiction to review a district court’s denial of a motion for summary judgment on a legal issue. This ruling was the first of its kind in the 5th Circuit, who now joins the 1st,
With less than one week on the job, newly-confirmed Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke announced that BOEM will offer 73,000,000 acres of lease space located in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration. Proposed Lease Sale 249 is currently scheduled for August 16, 2017, and will include all unleased areas of federal