A dozen Mexican residents filed a negligence and fraud suit on May 15 seeking more than $1 million from three Texas trial firms and seven lawyers after the plaintiffs' lawsuits stemming from a deadly 2007 mobile offshore oil platform explosion were dismissed.

The plaintiffs allege that the defendant firms and lawyers “failed to 'prosecute their cases in good faith,'” and as a result they are “forever barred” from refiling their personal injury suits.

“In the end, the fatal negligence of the lawyers deprived these plaintiffs of their right to seek redress for the injuries and deaths they sustained,” the plaintiffs allege in Dominguez v. Arnold & Itkin.