UK government supports BP in court fight

The government of the United Kingdom has filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court supporting oil giant BP’s appeal of rules regarding a settlement from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Lawyers for the U.K. told the Supreme Court that the settlement funds U.K.-based BP paid should not go to people who were not injured by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

{mosads}They said lower courts’ decisions to allow such payments raise “grave international comity concerns by undermining confidence in the vigorous and fair resolution of disputes.”

BP is the U.K.’s second largest oil producer. It has so far failed to persuade a federal district judge and an appeals court to limit the payments under its major 2012 settlement with landowners, businesses and others hurt by the largest spill in the Gulf.

Those lower decisions greatly expanded the company’s “scope of liability far beyond anything that would seem to be appropriate under our shared common-law traditions or that anyone would reasonably expect,” the U.K. government said in the “amicus curiae” brief filed last week.

The Supreme Court has not decided whether to consider BP’s appeal of a May ruling.