Legal experts agree it's almost a foregone conclusion that the federal investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will produce criminal charges. After all, mere negligence leading to serious oil pollution constitutes a misdemeanor under the Clean Water Act. Whether BP (BP) or any individual will face felony charges--or even prison time--is a more complicated question. One hint of what a broader indictment might look like comes from an unlikely source: private civil-racketeering lawsuits that have been brought on behalf of property and business owners in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana.
One of the suits, filed on June 12 in federal district court in Pensacola, Fla., by the plaintiffs' firm, Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner Rafferty & Proctor, not only accuses BP and Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward of discrete instances of pollution; it also alleges the company engaged in an illegal "enterprise" to mislead regulators over a period of years.
Included in this alleged pattern of wrongdoing was BP's failure to improve its safety practices in response to past incidents, resulting in criminal fines, the suit says. An explosion in 2005 at BP's Texas City (Tex.) refinery, which killed 15 workers, and an oil leak in 2006 from a BP pipeline in Alaska are among the episodes cited in the suit.
