[StBernard] Murphy petitions to admit evidence

[Westley Annis]

Murphy petitions to admit evidence
BY EDWARD KLUMP

Posted on Tuesday, May 16, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/154878/


Murphy Oil Corp. wants a federal judge handling its Louisiana oil spill case
to allow evidence implicating third parties such as the U. S. Army Corps of
Engineers. 

A court filing from the El Dorado-based company attempts to shift blame for
the spill, which occurred at Murphy's Meraux, La., refinery in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina last year. 

"If there was any basis for reliably predicting that the levees would fail
as they did, it is the Corps of Engineers that should have anticipated that
failure and taken the appropriate steps either to safeguard or warn the
community," the El Dorado-based company said in a May 11 filing. "It did
neither." 

A spill of about 1 million gallons of oil occurred at the company's Meraux
refinery in the wake of Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.
Some of that oil leaked into the surrounding neighborhoods, spawning a
class-action lawsuit that was certified earlier this year. Murphy plans to
resume operations at its 125, 000-barrels-a-day Meraux refinery this month. 

A filing by plaintiffs in a class-action case this month asks the court to
"prevent Murphy Oil... [from introducing ] into evidence, any fault on the
part of the [Corps ], the [Lake Borne ] Levee District or any other entity
based on their failures to prevent post-Katrina flooding in St. Bernard
Parish." 

The plaintiffs, which have said Murphy was negligent, gave several reasons
for their motion, including the idea that any duties of the Corps and levee
district didn't extend to risk of an oil spill. 

The plaintiffs' motion is expected to be heard this week in New Orleans, and
a trial is scheduled to begin in August. 

Murphy said it has settled with about 2, 500 residences, while the certified
area includes about 6, 000 residences. It's not clear how businesses factor
into those numbers. A Murphy spokesman declined to comment on the
third-party issue Monday, and efforts to reach a Murphy attorney were
unsuccessful. Hugh Lambert, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the
focus should remain on Murphy in this case. 

The company said in its filing that "catastrophic failures of two levee
systems during Hurricane Katrina resulted in a surge of floodwaters into St.
Bernard Parish that topped and breached an eight-foot earthen dike
surrounding a crude oil storage tank at the Murphy Oil refinery in Meraux." 

As the waters rose, the filing says, "they scoured a gap in the containment
dike" and filled the containment basin that held the tank and caused "the
tank to float and then rupture." Subsiding floodwaters moved the leaking oil
from the tank through a channel from a gap in the containment dike into
surrounding neighborhoods, according to the filing. 

"If the dike had not been breached by the floodwaters, the oil would have
been confined to the containment area within the refinery premises," the
filing reads. 

It points specifically to the Corps and the Lake Borne Levee District and
says the motion from the plaintiffs "is procedurally and substantively
flawed." What plaintiffs really are after "is a motion for summary judgment"
without evidence in support, Murphy says in the document. 

The plaintiffs say in a filing that the tank in question should have been
filled to 30 percent but that it was at "16. 3 percent capacity, in
violation of the company's hurricane preparation procedures requiring that a
greater amount be maintained in such tanks." In addition, the plaintiffs say
"discovery indicates that the secondary containment levees" around the tank
"were severely eroded and were not properly maintained prior to the storm." 

Murphy says in its filing that had the tank been filled to 30 percent
"almost twice the amount of oil would have been spilled, worsening the
situation." And the company "was not under a duty to construct its own
private flood-protection system," the filing says. 

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