Plaintiffs’ lawyers ask for delay in who should lead oil spill class actions

Plaintiffs' lawyers have asked a federal judge to wait until next month to decide who should lead a host of proposed class actions arising from the oil spill that fouled the Orange County coastline last month.

A dispute has been brewing over which law firms would steer the Huntington Beach oil spill litigation against Amplify Energy Corp. and its subsidiary, Beta Offshore LLC. A trio of firms -- Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, Aitken Aitken Cohn and Bentley & More LLP -- filed papers last week seeking to be appointed interim lead class counsel. Other plaintiffs' firms said they were caught off guard by the filing and that they too wanted to lead the litigation. Banzai Surf Company LLC et al v. Amplify Energy Corp., 21-cv-1669 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 7, 2021).

Amplify Energy, which is represented by Kirkland & Ellis LLP, has denied any wrongdoing and maintains that it has responded to the incident and reported it to federal authorities in a timely fashion.

Most of the litigation from the Oct. 2 spill has been assigned to U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California.

On Wednesday, Lexi J. Hazam of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Alexander Robertson of Robertson & Associates LLP filed a motion stating that they discussed with Amplify Energy's lawyers and all other plaintiffs' counsel about setting a hearing date to consider the leadership dispute but not all firms agreement. Hazam and Robertson asked Carter to set the hearing date of Dec. 3 or Dec. 7 to discuss the bids for leadership counsel.

Federal authorities have said the spill might have been caused by the dragging anchor of a cargo ship tearing a pipeline 5 miles offshore.