Panama City – City authorities in Springfield are thinking whether they would join other cities in the county of Bay in submitting a claim with British oil giant BP. The city commissioners Wednesday met with a team of lawyers (Harrison Sale McCloy or HSM) that represented majority of the government claims in Bay County over the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
HSM has proposed filing a claim on behalf of Springfield in a Wednesday public workshop. According to the lawfirm, filing a claim would be beneficial for the city, even though the financial and other losses because of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill were not significant.
It has been above 2 years since the worst offshore oil spill in the history of United States, but still Gulf residents are in the attempt of settling their claims against the UK-based oil company that is mainly responsible for the disaster.
Panama City, Bay County, Panama City Beach, Bay School District, Bay Medical, Callaway, and other federal agencies have hired the very same legal group for filing their claims. Now the Springfield city also is planning to join them.
“We want to get clarified what are the losses if we had a loss on account of the oil spill. Perhaps, it would be labor rather than anything else,” said Robert Walker, the Mayor of the Springfield city.
During the public workshop, lawyer Kevin Obos said his firm can file claim on behalf of Springfield city. The HSM is a part of legal group led by Dallas-based Nix-Patterson lawfirm.
“Fundamentally we are having a group joined together associating with various accountants. They will come here and perform a model to find out whether there is something for Springfield. I know there might not be huge losses, but filing a claim won’t cost you anything,” said Obos.
As the firm is taking the case on a contingency basis, the city doesn’t have to pay any legal fees. The lawfirm will be given a percent of the settlement amount received by the city.
“As you know, if we are able to recover some amount, that is definitely better than not at all receiving anything. We are not declaring we have some loss or we do not have any loss. But it is simply a matter of going through it and see whether we do have,” Walker said.
In their upcoming meeting on 2nd July, the commissioners in the city will determine whether they would file a claim with BP.