BP Avoids Toxic Tort Suit from Deepwater Horizon Clean Up Worker

BP Exploration & Production Inc. avoided a toxic-tort case from a Deepwater Horizon oil spill clean-up worker after a federal appeals court said the plaintiff’s expert testimony had “fatal analytical flaws.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a lower court’s summary judgment to BP, ruling the studies conducted by plaintiff Floyd Ruffin’s expert witness, a genetic and molecular epidemiologist, are limited to one kind of chemical that Ruffin wasn’t exposed to.

Dr. Benjamin Rybicki’s study establishing that exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can cause prostate cancer only identified excess risk from benzoapyrene, and PAH chemical levels ...