UPDATED: Injured football player ‘responding’, but still in critical condition
September 30, 2015
Alfreda Richoux
October 6, 2015
A recent state law aimed at putting an end to the cycle of lawsuits is impacting cleanup efforts on lands affected by oil exploration.
Legacy lawsuits are suits filed by landowners seeking payment for damages to their property from oil and gas exploration. Landowners are allowed to sue oil companies who may have damaged the property decades ago, after the property in question has transferred hands multiple times.
State Rep. Gordon Dove said that the state Legislature passed a law two years ago to rectify this issue. According to Dove, the new law put the Department of Natural Resources in charge of determining a fair cleanup cost. Dove said that ballooning cleanup costs were an issue before the law was passed.
“So-called expert witnesses were coming in and were saying a $2 million cleanup was $40 million. So the process was getting stagnated, because these overinflated cleanup figures were coming in,” Dove said.
Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association, says that there are about 300-400 lawsuits currently going through the courts, with more than 3,000 defendants listed in them. As president of an industry association, he does not differentiate one legacy lawsuit from another.
“No one case sticks out; they’re all bad,” Briggs said.
Briggs said companies are paying the price for something they could never foresee decades ago.
“Companies that bought these properties never thought they would be sued over something that wasn’t illegal then,” he said.
Dove calls the law the biggest environmental cleanup law pertaining to well sites in Louisiana. He says that this law actually forces money awarded in the case to go toward fixing the environment.
“In the past, the moneys would be awarded, and some people would clean it, some may not. They would just pocket the money,” he said.
According to Dove, money awarded in the case goes into two pots. Some personal damages are paid to the landowner filing the suit. Another pot goes to the Department of Natural Resources to fund the cleanup operation at the site in question. Any money leftover from the cleanup is passed on to the landowner.
While the enforced cleanup would prevent any future legacy lawsuits from the well site listed, it does not clear the entire property. Thus, if the same landowner has another well site on his or her property that is damaged, he or she can file a separate suit regarding that well site.
Dove expressed a worry about these lawsuits acting as a “spider web,” which means a landowner lists every previous owner of the property as a defendant in the case. The state representative feels that these owners should figure out who damaged the land before getting everyone involved.
“Here you are, you didn’t do anything wrong, yet you’re pulled in a lawsuit. Now you have to go get yourself out,” he said.
Dove said an issue with these spider web lawsuits is that they can get small businesses dragged in, harming them in the process. Briggs offered a cynical sum up of the lawsuits.
“It’s really about lawyers making money from fees more than anything,” Briggs said.
