Lawyer acquitted over alleged made up charges about BP oil spill

A lawyer has been acquitted on charges he made up thousands of false clients to sue oil giant BP for damages caused by the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Under a 2012 settlement BP agreed to compensate businesses and individuals affected by the disaster. Mikal Watts had allegedly sought to take advantage of the compensation programme. Reuters reported that Watts, from Texas, was found not guilty by a federal court in Mississippi on Thursday.

His brother David Watts and Wynter Lee, who both worked for Mikal Watts’ law firm, were also acquitted, as well as Hector Eloy Guerra and Thi Hoang ‘Abbie’ Nguyen.

However, Gregory Warren and Thi Houng ‘Kirsty’ Le were prosecuted.

The defendants were accused of submitting claims on behalf of over 40,000 people who were found to have false or stolen personal information, or had not agreed to be represented by Watt’s San Antonio law firm.

In one case, an alleged victim called Lucy Lu, who was said to be deckhand on a commercial vessel in the area, was actually a dog.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico resulted from an explosion in Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was working under contract for BP in the Macondo prospect in April 2011. It was the worst offshore oil and environmental disaster in US history as 11 people were killed and over 3m barrels of oil was spilled affecting shorelines of several states for about three months. BP’s final bill for the oil spill reportedly came to $61.6bn.

Shares in BP were up 0.16% to 436.25p at 0913 BST.