A federal appeals court has refused to order a judge to recuse himself from dozens of lawsuits over the deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion even though he owned corporate bonds issued by two of the companies sued in the cases.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans refused to disqualify himself from presiding over more than 40 suits spawned by the April 20 rig blast because he argued that his ownership of debt instruments issued by Halliburton and Transocean didn’t give him a financial interest in the companies.
