Reuters reports that Alabama’s attorney general Troy King is suing BP Plc (BP), Transocean (RIG) and Halliburton (HAL) for “catastrophic harm” caused by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state,” Mr. King told Reuters on Friday.
Attorney General King filed the lawsuits in federal court in Montgomery late Thursday afternoon. In a statement released Friday, King said “their history of saying one thing and doing another, and now, new information that they have been secretly working to gain a legal advantage, can only further damage our people.”
The lawsuit accuses defendants of being “slow and incompetent, if not dishonest, in their announcements and warnings to the state of Alabama and its citizens and businesses.”
“We are suing them for the amount it will take to make Alabama whole,” King said, declining to specify a figure for damages.
The suit also named Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC), among others.
The legal action was brought in response to the catastrophic oil disaster that resulted from the explosion and subsequent sinking of the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010, causing nearly 200 million gallons of oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.
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