BP plc and its lawyers Kirkland & Ellis have likely finished off a long-running class action alleging that the oil company should cover cleanup costs from a shuttered oil refinery in southeast Kansas.
The Kansas Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate appeals court, affirmed a judge’s refusal to redo a jury trial BP won in the environmental litigation in 2008. The plaintiffs—a class of property owners in and around the tiny city of Neodesha—argued that they were entitled to a new trial because of juror misconduct and flawed jury instructions. The appeals court held on Friday that the complex 17-week trial was far from perfect, but that the blunders weren’t serious enough to warrant a retrial.
