U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier granted a motion to have the trial concerning "limitation and liability allocation issues" rescheduled for a later date, as BP Plc (NYSE:BP), Halliburton Energy Services (NYSE:HAL), Cameron International (NYSE:CAM), and others, said they needed more time to prepare.
The new trial date is set to begin on February 27, 2012, about four months later than the original trial date.
Barbier wrote, "While the court intends to expedite this complex litigation to the extent possible, it appears to the court that the defendants' motion has merit, and that there is good cause to reset the limitation trial date."
Much of this was in connection to the government dragging their feet on the investigation into what caused the failure of the blowout preventer from Cameron International.
The Feds have had it for a month and are already a week past the October 1 date they said they were going to begin their investigation on, and it'll take a lot longer before they begin, as they wait for the go ahead on how to proceed with the examination of the device.
Now the testing on the blowout preventer isn't expected to be finished until sometime in February 2011, according to Barbier.
Some attorneys for plaintiffs are complaining that they won't go to trial until sometime during 2013. Maybe they should have went the route of going through the claims process in connection with the BP compensation fund rather than pay huge fees to lawyers, along with the several years it'll take to get a trial, with no guarantee of winning.
Attorneys say this is also a stalling tactic by the companies. But that's not too believable, as it's the U.S. government which is holding things up with their usual incompetence concerning the blowout preventer, not the oil companies or the suppliers.
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