"Judge orders BP to stick by Deepwater Horizon payouts agreement", 24 Sep 2014

BP wanted its money back – hundreds of millions of dollars of it – but a federal judge said Wednesday that the oil giant must stick by its agreement with the companies it compensated for business losses due to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. BP argued that a flawed funding formula in their settlement with alleged victims of the spill enabled many businesses to collect on questionable claims, and that they should be forced to return the money.US District Judge Carl Barbier agreed several weeks ago to change the formula for any future payments, but he ruled Wednesday that a deal is a deal when it comes to the money BP has already paid out…Barbier said he would rule later on the issue of compensation for cleanup workers whose chronic medical problems weren’t diagnosed until after the deal’s cutoff date of 16 April, 2012…