BP Oil Spill Claims
BP Oil Spill Claims
Better Go Ahead And File That BP Oil Spill Claim--Time Is Running Out
At the current rate of filing, the majority of qualifying Mississippi business owners will miss the deadline to file a BP Oil Spill Claim. Businesses currently have 6 months to file a claim--the clock is ticking.
BP has spent huge sums of money in an effort to dissuade qualifying business owners from filing a BP Oil Spill Claim. BP has paid high priced lawyers to challenge the terms of the settlement agreement that they, themselves, co-authored and fought to have approved by the District Court. They’ve spent untold amounts purchasing whole page ads in the New York Times trying to paint themselves as the real victims of the BP Oil Spill. BP did all of this in an attempt to renege on their contract and avoid paying legitimate claims.
As confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, BP is going to have to live up to the terms of their settlement agreement. In denying BP’s request for certiorari, the Supreme Court made clear that they will not even hear BP’s appeal. BP lost the battle.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling established the settlement agreement’s “effective date”, which will begin the running of the clock to file a BP Oil Spill Claim. Claimants will have until some time in June of 2015 to get their claims submitted.
If you own a business in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Florida; then, you could be passing up a huge opportunity by not having an experienced BP Oil Spill Lawyer determine whether your business qualifies to file a claim.
Qualifying business should prepare and file a BP Oil Spill Claim right now for several reasons.
(1)BP agreed to pay your claim
Regardless of what BP now says, they agreed to compensate all qualifying businesses for losses sustained following the BP Oil Spill. In an effort to avoid future litigation regarding whether the BP Oil Spill was the actual cause of economic loss to a non-excluded business, the Settlement Agreement simply requires that a business’ revenues meet a particular revenue pattern, which is not difficult to meet for many businesses. The only businesses that are excluded from filing a claim are: casinos, insurance companies, banks and real estate developers. All other businesses can qualify.
(2)Your competitors will probably file a claim
If you do not pursue a BP Oil Spill Claim for your qualifying business, you can rest assured that your competitors probably will. This could have a significant impact on your competitors financial ability to compete with your business. Consider the amount of advertising or equipment that your competitor could purchase with their BP Oil Spill Settlement proceeds; thus, placing them in a stronger position to compete in the market. The average payout on a business economic loss claim is in excess of $100,000.
(3) Filing a claim is easy with the help of an attorney
When considering whether to file a BP Oil Spill claim for your business, you should contact an experienced BP Oil Spill Lawyer to evaluate your potential claim. An experienced BP Oil Spill Attorney can quickly determine whether your business qualifies by reviewing gross revenues for certain periods. If the claim qualifies, the Attorney will simply need documents that are normally kept by a business’ bookkeeper such as monthly profit and loss statements and federal tax returns. Profit and loss statements can be easily exported from electronic accounting software programs such as Quickbooks. All other documents will be provided to you by the attorney for signature.
(4)The Claims Administrator encourages you to file a claim
The settlement program’s Claims Administrator, Patrick Juneau, has said “when in doubt, file a claim”. Even though a particular business my not usually be associated with oiled beaches, so long as they are not in one of the excluded industries, their business may very well qualify for a claim. It doesn’t matter whether you own a car dealership, a restaurant, a clothing store, a pharmacy, a bar, etc., you could very well qualify for a significant claim. As Juneau has pointed out in The Times-Picayune “... the universe of eligible claimants is far broader than most people assume. Any individual in the Gulf that can demonstrate a defined financial loss around the time of the Deepwater Horizon disaster can make a claim, and ‘essentially any kind of business at all.”
Tuesday, December 9, 2014