"Legal experts said the idea of making BP reimburse drillers who are out of work is unusual, but could survive in a courtroom "

Plan aims to pay idled rig workers

"WASHINGTON — With the Obama administration's moratorium on deep-water drilling drawing fire, the White House is pitching a novel plan for keeping idled rig workers in their homes: making BP pay the earnings they lose while the ban is in place.

The company has already paid more than $57 million to shrimpers and other workers who have lost wages and business because crude gushing from BP's leaking underwater well has shut down commercial fishing throughout the Gulf of Mexico.

But the administration's proposal, first suggested by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, also would make the London-based oil giant cut checks to the workers, on-shore suppliers and others whose business is dwindling while drill rigs in the Gulf remain offline.

“BP is responsible for all the damages that flow from the BP oil spill,” Salazar told a Senate panel Wednesday. “And these are some of the consequences from that oil spill.”

Legal experts said the idea of making BP reimburse drillers who are out of work is unusual, but could survive in a courtroom — especially if it is in the hands of a jury angry about the oil in the Gulf.

David Adelman, a law professor at the University of Texas, said there's a “pretty attenuated connection” between the spill from a BP well and workers displaced by a government-ordered drilling ban. BP could point to the administration's decision to impose the ban as a major break in the cascading chain of events that were directly caused by the spill.

“That would be a difficult case to make,” said Thomas McGarity, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. But, he said, it's not impossible because the legal question of proximate cause — whether an action was the primary precursor of the damage — is up to a jury..."