BP alleged Texas superlawyer Mikal Watts committed fraud in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans in 2013. The oil company charged that Mr. Watts attempted to defraud the BP claims process as he stated that he represented over 44,000 clients and made other false statements. Some of the choice allegations are:
2. Specifically, this Complaint relates to the Seafood Compensation Program of the Deepwater Horizon Economic and Property Damages Settlement Agreement...
3. This Complaint is necessitated by the brazen fraud of attorney Mikal Watts and
his law firm, Watts Guerra LLP – fraud that, if not remedied, stands to cost BP substantial sums and to hold the entire Seafood Compensation Program up to public ridicule. It is not alleged in this Complaint that the Class engaged in any wrongful conduct, only that it unjustly benefited from the wrongdoing of Watts
4. In misrepresentations to BP and this Court, Watts and his firm claimed to represent more than 40,000 deckhands who allegedly suffered economic injuries as a result of the Oil Spill – more than 76 percent of the individuals ultimately projected to be potential claimants under the Seafood Compensation Program (“the Program”). Watts’ representations caused BP to offer $2.3 billion to establish the Seafood Compensation Program to compensate, inter alia, these 40,000-plus deckhands. But we now know that over half of Watts’ alleged clients were phantoms: individuals never represented by Watts, in a number of cases not even commercial fishermen, and in some instances individuals who are deceased....
20. Only 5,998 other SFJs had been filed by other representatives on behalf of individual seafood crew claimants. See id. Thus, Watts filed 88 percent of the individual seafood crew claim SFJs.
41. Watts ultimately filed only 648 individual crew claims under the Seafood Compensation Program – less than 2 percent of the number of crew claimants he purported to represent. Of those 648 claimants, only 8 have been found eligible for payment, with 17 claims still pending and available for possible compensation. In short, more than 98 percent of the Watts claimants never even filed a claim with the Seafood Compensation Program, while 96 percent of the claims that he did file have been denied....
45. While attempting to verify the identities of these claimants, the BPCP discovered that one of its own employees – who was not a commercial fisherman, had never retained Watts as counsel, and had never filed a claim – had been included among Watts’ client list not once, but twice. His first “claim” included his name, current address, a defunct phone number, and a wholly incorrect SSN. His second “claim” included his name, his parents’ address, his parents’ phone number, and a different, incorrect SSN.
46. It is bad enough that Watts filed fraudulent SFJs and BPCP claims for at least 58 percent of the claimants. But, even among the 42 percent of claims with matched names and SSNs, more than 95 percent never filed a claim with the Program. The inference of fraud is overwhelming.....
However, the lawsuits did not stop with BP. Several Vietnamese fishermen filed suit as well against Mr. Watts. They claimed that he filed suit against BP without their consent. The plaintiffs stated in that lawsuit:
This case involves a well-known and powerful law firm profiting at the expense of the hard-working Gulf Coast fishermen, the majority of whom are Vietnamese-American, as well as business owners whose lives and ability to earn a living were devastated by the Deepwater Horizon disaster...
2. Mr. Watts and WG were involved in the misappropriation of identities of many of thousands of Gulf Coast Vietnamese-Americans in order to increase his chances of obtaining a position on the Deepwater Horizon Plaintiffs Steering Committee (the “PSC”) for their own financial gain...
3. Mikal Watts and WG held out to the Court that they were attorneys who represented tens of thousands of Vietnamese-American "clients."...
4. Upon information and belief, Mr. Watts and WG committed these blatant wrongs against Plaintiffs, and the members of the putative class, under the arrogant presumption that this minority group of Vietnamese fishermen7 would be scared of Defendants power and influence and thus would bow their heads. Little did they know that the Vietnamese are fighters to their very bones. Since their immigration to the United States after the fall of South Vietnam, the Vietnamese fishermen have successfully sued and fought fearlessly against Ku Klux Klan members,8 various mafias, corrupt government officials, global corporations and communist governments, and many other villains. As Congressman Al Green of Texas said in one of his noted speeches: "Do not ever mess with the Vietnamese Fishermen." (KF note: Or ask the Chinese what happened when they invaded Vietnam)....
9. Mr. Watts and WG committed various torts against the Vietnamese fishermen and others, such as misappropriation (or negligent misappropriation) of identity, negligent misrepresentation...
The two cases were consolidated and continued in U.S. District Court. These two cases are probably the basis for the indictment that will be announced later today.
1 comment:
Jackson received a large settlement. Tell me, how did they suffer any loss! There has to be fraud involved. If anything, Jackson gained, by having tourists come to our city, instead of the coast. Something is very fishy...no pun intended.
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