New York Comptroller seeks lead plaintiff status in BP litigation. The AP (6/23) reported, “New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has hired outside lawyers in an effort to become the lead plaintiff in a federal class-action lawsuit by investors against BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. DiNapoli, as trustee of the state’s $133 billion public employee pension fund, claims the British oil giant misled investors about the safety of its operations.”
In “The Energy Source” blog at Forbes (6/23), Christopher Helman wrote, “Philip Adams, of bond research firm Gimme Credit, took a stab at” estimating BP’s total liability for the spill “in a research note yesterday. He gets to a total of $60.9 billion by breaking up the costs into three ‘buckets.’ The first bucket is the $20 billion” escrow fund, the second “is clean-up and compensation,” and the third “fines and penalties.”