IN BRIEF: Water Dispute Expedited

A special master is resisting further delay in water-rights litigation between Florida and Georgia. Ralph Lancaster Jr. gave the states until mid-July to complete written discovery in their dispute over water from the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, with depositions done by Thanksgiving and motions by mid-January. He said he had “a sense of the complexities of the issues involved” and that they included “hydrology, biology, economics, et cetera.” But if “either state feels that you are understaffed, I urge you to take another look at it.”

BP CATCHES A BREAK

A federal judge on Jan. 15 concluded that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill left 3.19 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico — far less than previously estimated. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier’s finding means that BP Exploration & Production Inc. could be on the hook for less than $14 billion in Clean Water Act fines rather than the Justice Department’s originally estimated $18 billion. Proceeding to determine how much BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. will pay in penalties under that law were to begin on Jan. 20 in New Orleans.

FIRMS ISSUE SCAM WARNINGS