Law passed ostensibly to kill the SLFPA-E lawsuit
probably doesn't actually kill the lawsuit.
Barry described two points of contention: that legislators
broke their rules on public notice while moving the bill between
committees, and that the language of the law actually exempts the levee
authority from the intended oversight.
During the session, lawmakers supporting one bill to stop
the suit failed to gain approval in one committee. But they were able to
have it amended into another bill that was before a more receptive
committee, where it eventually passed.
“So not only was proper notice not given, but [the new
bill] as it was heard was entirely different from how it was filed,”
Barry wrote. “And it gets even more egregious: forget the lack of notice
— even if you were physically in the room when the committee heard [the
bill] you could not get a copy of the bill. This violates all sorts of
notice and open meetings standards.”
So
what was the point of that law?
SB 469 appears to have been written and
deliberately designed by lawyers who represent the oil and gas industry
in order to shield, reduce, or eliminate their clients’ exposure to
civil damages on a wide range of pending and future claims, including,
most notably, BP’s liability for billions of dollars in outstanding
claims related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Indeed,
according to people intimately involved in the legislative process, no
one lobbied harder for the passage of SB 469 than those associated with
BP.
2 comments:
We're days away from Jindal packing SELFPA-E... That WILL kill the suit.
http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268748/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=WedzQjBl
Thanks. I meant to mention that. It underscores the point. The bill was about doing things besides killing the lawsuit.
Post a Comment