Supreme Court won’t take BP oil spill case

The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from oil giant BP stemming from its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Without comment, the justices declined to hear the case Monday, effectively affirming a lower court’s decision against BP.

{mosads}BP has been fighting for years about the terms of the landmark class-action settlement it made after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and 87-day spill from the Macondo well.

The company wants the courts to rule that businesses and individuals who were not directly affected by the spill should not be entitled to settlement funds.

BP has said that hundreds of millions of dollars out of the $28 billion it has paid in settlement claims and cleanup costs have gone to parties not directly affected.

A lawyer for the claimants applauded the court’s decision, saying it allows the process to move forward.

“I am gratified that, finally, our clients’ claims can be processed, as they should have been long ago if not for BP’s cruel antics that were allowed to delay the settlement that BP itself agreed to,” Joe Rice, a partner in the firm Motley Rice, said in a statement.

In BP’s August filing, it asked the court to stop payments to parties “whose purported losses were not fairly traceable to the spill … such as lawyers who lost their law licenses and warehouses that burned down before the spill occurred.”

Business groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, joined in urging the Supreme Court to take the case, writing that “it may discourage future defendants from settling cases, portending a spike in costly class litigation as parties opt to forgo the efficiencies of class settlement.”

The government of BP’s home country the United Kingdom also weighed in on its behalf, telling the court BP has gone to great lengths to atone for the spill.

Claimants to the settlement asked the court not to review the last ruling, writing, “This case is about a contract that BP signed but now wishes it hadn’t.”

Halliburton and Transocean each contributed more than $1 billion to the settlement fund for their roles in the disaster.

In addition to the settlement funds, BP faces up to $18 billion in civil penalties thanks to a September court finding that it was grossly negligent for the spill.