Hotels, cruise lines, other businesses and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi have joined a frenzy of litigants to beat a deadline for filing federal lawsuits for damage blamed on the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

More than 40 lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of Florida alone against BP Plc to beat the expiration of a three-year statute of limitations for filing spill-related civil actions.