Everything about the impending trial over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is big — the potential damages, the range of legal issues, the thousands of exhibits, the cast of lawyers. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans has made it clear that he intends to prevent the case from getting too big.
As the Feb. 27 trial date neared, Barbier issued a series of orders tightening the scope of the first of what was expected to be three trial phases to a single question: Who is liable for the April 20, 2010, explosion that killed 11 workers and blew a well that spewed 4.4 million barrels of oil and 200,000 tons of methane gas into the Gulf of Mexico? (Scroll down for a litigation timeline.)
