Information overload

It wasn't the only reason cited but according to this one reason Judge Barbier ruled that evidence BP's prior incident record wouldn't have been admissible at the trial that was just averted is because... well, there's sooo much of it.

On Feb. 9, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled that both BP's past safety record and a number of investigative reports involving past accidents and the Gulf oil spill could not be used in the first chapter of the three-part court battle, called the "incident" phase, which deals with events leading up to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

He based his rulings largely on the length of time that would be added to the trial by either assuring information on which the reports were based followed federal evidence rules, or allowing BP and other defendants to contest the materials.