Oil gi­ant BP plc's (BP) re­quest to a fed­er­al judge to de­lay oil spill com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments to seafood work­ers was de­nied. BP had ap­pealed to US Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bi­er to put on hold the sec­ond phase of pay­ments un­der the US$2.3 bil­lion Seafood Com­pen­sa­tion Fund.Per the law­suit, al­leged Texas lawyer Mikal Watts, fraud­u­lent­ly claimed to rep­re­sent 40,000 deck­hands in the seafood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gramme, apart from us­ing fake So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty num­bers and oth­er fake doc­u­ments that calls for prompt sus­pen­sion of all pay­ments.How­ev­er, the ar­gu­ment by the Plain­tiff's Steer­ing Com­mit­tee was that Watts and his clients–re­al or not–sig­ni­fy a small por­tion of over­all claims and have in­signif­i­cant im­pact on the ul­ti­mate set­tle­ment. The plain­tiff op­posed to the de­lay, while the judge pushed BP lawyers to prove that claims from the deck­hands, which Watts says he rep­re­sents, are key to de­cid­ing the set­tle­ment val­ue.

The judge was un­con­vinced and com­ment­ed it would be sev­er­al months be­fore a sec­ond phase of pay­ment is dis­trib­uted if the seafood com­pen­sa­tion plan is re­ject­ed at present.The at­tor­ney for the class su­ing BP al­so com­ment­ed that peo­ple who may be due valid pay­ments should not have claims de­layed be­cause of ac­cu­sa­tions against Watts.BP es­ti­mates the to­tal pay­ment un­der the spill com­pen­sa­tion to ex­ceed US$7.8 bil­lion. Un­der a sub­stan­tial set­tle­ment deal at­tained last spring, thou­sands of Gulf Coast busi­ness­es and res­i­dents hurt by the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co have start­ed to re­ceive pay­ments.As part of the first round of pay­ments, the Seafood Com­pen­sa­tion Fund has al­ready processed 21,871 claims and hand­ed out over US$1 bil­lion in pay­ments to claimants. The terms of the set­tle­ment states that any mon­ey re­main­ing in the fund af­ter the first round of pay­ments will be dis­trib­uted among claimants in a sec­ond round.

In an­oth­er case, a fed­er­al court ruled on Fri­day that the oil gi­ant is not en­ti­tled to see con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments used by a court-ap­point­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tor who has al­leged that some at­tor­neys act­ed im­prop­er­ly in the claims process aris­ing from the 2010 Gulf oil spill.The in­ves­ti­ga­tor, for­mer FBI di­rec­tor Louis Freeh, has said some pri­vate at­tor­neys im­prop­er­ly used a lawyer who once served on claims ad­min­is­tra­tor Patrick Juneau's staff to ex­pe­dite a US$7.9 mil­lion claim. Freeh has rec­om­mend­ed that the court con­sid­er dis­al­low­ing the claim. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed sanc­tions against the lawyers and im­prove­ments on con­trols in the claims process.Freeh's in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so not­ed a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est and breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty by an ap­peals ad­min­is­tra­tor in the claims process, who has re­signed.BP had asked US Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bi­er to or­der Freeh to turn over var­i­ous doc­u­ments from the probe. But Bar­bi­er on Fri­day said BP has shown no rea­son why it should see the con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments.In re­ject­ing BP's bid for the doc­u­ments, Bar­bi­er not­ed that Freeh's find­ings in the probe have not been ad­verse to the oil gi­ant.

(Ya­hoo Fi­nance)