Commercial fishermen along the Gulf Coast obviously were hit hard in the wallet by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But what about seafood distributors? Seaside hotels? Restaurants and gas stations that line the main travel corridors leading to the Gulf’s popular resort towns? Which businesses should be eligible for compensation from BP PLC and other actors in the disaster, and how should their damages be set?
Rhon Jones, a partner at Montgomery, Ala.’s Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, spent the better part of the past year focused squarely on those questions as one of a small group of plaintiffs attorneys responsible for negotiating a compensation formula for business claimants. “Our positions were quite different at the beginning,” Jones said of BP’s lawyers and the plaintiffs team. “One of the challenges was to try to craft something that would be reasonable for all businesses.”
