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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Special-purpose company loses negligence lawsuit against Petrotrin in Privy Council

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1154 days ago
20220523
Lord David Kitchin

Lord David Kitchin

A spe­cial-pur­pose non-prof­it com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ing 101 La Brea res­i­dents, who were af­fect­ed by an oil spill in De­cem­ber 2013, has lost its bid to pur­sue a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar neg­li­gence law­suit against for­mer State-oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin on their be­half. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Mon­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil ruled that a High Court Judge and the Court of Ap­peal were cor­rect to refuse to al­low La Brea En­vi­rons Pro­tec­tors (LBEP) to rep­re­sent the res­i­dents in their law­suit over com­pen­sa­tion. 

The de­ci­sion in the ap­peal does not mean that the res­i­dents, who claim they suf­fered neg­a­tive health ef­fects as a re­sult of the oil spill and clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties, will be with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­dress, as they still have a pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tion to sub­sti­tute some of them as claimants in the law­suit. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the oil spill took place in mid-De­cem­ber 2013. Vil­lagers woke up to a strong smell of gas in the air and found oil along a lo­cal beach. 
The res­i­dents in­formed the com­pa­ny sev­er­al months lat­er and sued Petrotrin and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Agency (OSH Agency). 

In their law­suit, the com­pa­ny claimed Petrotrin act­ed neg­li­gent­ly by us­ing the chem­i­cal Corex­it 9500 in its clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties. The oil dis­per­sant has been banned by sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al coun­tries since 1988. 

They al­so con­tend­ed that Petrotrin hired some of them to clean beach­es with­out pro­vid­ing prop­er safe­ty equip­ment and that the OSH Agency failed to en­sure Petrotrin com­plied with health and safe­ty leg­is­la­tion. 

Petrotrin and the OSH Agency de­nied any wrong­do­ing, as they claimed they did not owe the com­pa­ny a du­ty of care. 

In 2018, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams dis­missed the com­pa­ny’s ap­pli­ca­tion to rep­re­sent its mem­bers but did not rule on the al­ter­nate ap­pli­ca­tion to sub­sti­tute some res­i­dents to rep­re­sent the oth­ers. 

The com­pa­ny’s ap­peal was sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Char­maine Pem­ber­ton in 2019. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Lord David Kitchin, who wrote the judge­ment, stat­ed that while the lo­cal courts had flex­i­bil­i­ty in their dis­cre­tion to al­low the case to pro­ceed, they came to the cor­rect con­clu­sion. 

While he not­ed the res­i­dents pos­si­bly had strong claims against Petrotrin and the agency based on the se­ri­ous­ness of the al­le­ga­tions in the law­suit, he said the com­pa­ny did not, as it did not ex­ist at the time of the oil spill.

“It is hard to dis­cern any co­her­ent case that Petrotrin or the OSH Agency owned any du­ty of care to LBEP, or that LBEP, as op­posed to its mem­bers, has suf­fered any loss or dam­age for which Petrotrin or the OSH Agency is re­spon­si­ble,” Lord Kitchin said. 

Lord Kitchin re­fused to con­sid­er whether the res­i­dents could be sub­sti­tut­ed in place of the com­pa­ny to keep the case alive. 

While he stat­ed that “it would be hard not to feel con­sid­er­able sym­pa­thy” for the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, Lord Kitchin said the ap­pli­ca­tion was still pend­ing be­fore the lo­cal courts. 

He said he and his col­leagues had not been pro­vid­ed with suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence that the mem­bers had agreed to be sub­sti­tut­ed af­ter be­ing ad­vised of the po­ten­tial con­se­quences. He al­so point­ed out that the sub­sti­tu­tion ap­pli­ca­tion may not have been made with “rea­son­able promp­ti­tude.”

The res­i­dents’ com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by El­ton Prescott, SC and Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai, while Gilbert Pe­ter­son and Ami­rah Ra­haman rep­re­sent­ed Petrotrin. Ravin­dra Nan­ga rep­re­sent­ed the OSH Agency. 

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