Summary Judgment is American Lawyer senior writer Susan Beck’s regular opinion column for the Litigation Daily.
If you still read print newspapers, then you’ve probably seen those full-page BP plc ads in which the company blasts the Deepwater Horizon claims settlement process. BP has condemned this court-supervised process by claiming that it repeatedly allowed bogus awards for losses not caused by the 2010 Deepwater spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In design and substance, the ads are perfectly executed to provoke outrage against plaintiffs and their lawyers and garner sympathy for the oil giant. In a word, they’re masterful.
