What Does The Houston Liability Limit Petition Really Say About Transocean?

On Thursday, just three blocks from our law offices in Houston, oil rig equipment company Transocean planned to file a petition to limit their fiscal liability in relation to April’s devastating oil rig disaster that killed 11 workers and injured many others. Legal explanations aside, what might this action say about Transocean and what they feel about the Deepwater Horizon offshore tragedy?

• We want to limit our monetary responsibilities to the victims of this oil rig accident, their families, and other people who have suffered losses. By filing this petition, Transocean is asking federal courts to pay no more than $26.7 million to those who were affected by the oil rig accident – no matter what the actual costs of damages and losses is.

• We want to make this legal process more complicated and slower than it has to be. Because the petition will in all likelihood be rejected by the courts, Transocean is filing for limited liability for other reasons; to gain an edge over the oil rig accident victims in court, to name the venue for future litigation, to make the entire process more cumbersome, and to shorten the time limit victims have to file lawsuits.

• We don’t mind using outdated laws to buy ourselves time and delay payments to suffering families. No one, including Transocean itself, thinks that the court will rule to accept the petition to limit its liability. That makes it very clear that the petition has only ulterior motives that benefit the company itself. 

• We take zero responsibility for what happened on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico. Part of the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 states that, in order to procure limited liability, you must not have had any hand in the vessel accident itself. In fact, Transocean released a statement that said that the offshore rig accident and injuries “were not caused or contributed to, done, occasioned and/or incurred by any fault, negligence, unseaworthiness, or lack of due care on the part of the petitioners, or anyone for whom petitioners are or at any material time were responsible.”