The suit was filed in Galveston County Court on behalf of four workers, including one who was killed in the incident. The incident involves an April 20 explosion and fire on a drilling platform named Deepwater Horizon that sank roughly 50 miles off the Louisiana shoreline in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Standard-Times.Bill Johnson, one of the plaintiffs and a supervisor on the rig, attempted to get his men off of the burning structure and into life rafts, but claims that the company refused to pick up the boat once they were clear, leading many of the survivors to suffer smoke inhalation trauma in addition to other injuries sustained in the initial blast.
Lawyers have named 10 defendants in the lawsuit, including three from Transocean (the owner of the rig), Four from BP (the lessee), Halliburton Energy Systems (whose construction may have failed to prevent the explosion), Sperry-Sun Drilling and Cameron International.