BP Defeats Challenge to Expert Witness Exclusion in Illness Suit

A BP Exploration & Production Inc. worker who claimed the company was responsible for his oil spill clean-up work-related illness failed to show that a federal district court erroneously rejected his expert witnesses and his lawsuit, the Fifth Circuit said Friday.

The district court reasonably concluded that reports from Matthew Williams’ experts didn’t satisfy reliability requirements, Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, affirming a grant of BP’s motion to exclude the expert reports and its motion for summary judgment. And therefore, the lower court properly found that Williams couldn’t establish that BP’s ...