New Orleans restaurateur Susan Spicer has filed a federal lawsuit against BP and other companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
In a personal inury suit filed Friday, Spicer’s Bayona Corp. sued BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Energy Services.
U.S. District Court papers in New Orleans say the suit seeks “compensatory damages & exemplary and/or punitive damages discharging [sic] crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The Reuters news service reported Spicer expects her business to lose money because of decreased tourism as a result of the spill and its damage to local fisheries.
In the suit, Spicer says, her “occupation and ability to perform [her] chosen occupation was destroyed and/or adversely and detrimentally affected on April 20, 2010,” the date of the Deepwater Horizon accident.
The suit is a class-action suit, seeking damage not only for Bayona Corp., but for other similarly situated victims.
The suit says “The massive oil slick created by the continuing discharge of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico has caused or will cause injuries and damages to the Class to the extent that the seafood industry will be closed and the sustainable natural resource of the fishery will be greatly harmed and/or destroyed. Simply put, the oil slick and continuing discharge of crude oil is an ecological and economic disaster for Plaintiff.”
