Federal Court Orders Arbitration of Claims in BP Oil Spill Case
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Disputing Blog by Karl Bayer, Victoria VanBuren, and Holly Hayes September 2011 |
As readers may already know, litigation surrounding the “Deep Water Horizon” oil spill is well underway. In a later twist, a federal trial court in Louisiana granted a motion to stay litigation between Anadarko and BP and ordered the parties to arbitrate pursuant to an arbitration clause found in their Joint Operating Agreement. See In RE: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig.
BP had filed a motion to compel arbitration, however, Anadarko responded that BP had waived its right to arbitrate by defending the lawsuit in court. The court found that BP’s actions - examining a single Anadarko employee, serving three individual requests for production on other parties related to Anadarko, asking a few dozen questions at depositions of other parties related to Anadarko, and identifying four Anadarko witnesses on a non-binding list of potential witnesses- did not substantially invoke the judicial process. The court, accordingly, stayed Anadarko’s claims against BP and sent the parties to arbitration.
Stay tuned.
Biography
Victoria VanBuren holds a B.B.A. in Finance from Southern Methodist University and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She focuses on intellectual property law and arbitration. Known as a "worker bee," she is an active legal blogger and is currently pursuing a degree in computer science. Prior to joining the team at Karl Bayer, Victoria worked at a boutique intellectual property law firm in Austin. She is well versed in computer hardware and programming languages: Assembly, C/C++, HTML, XHTML, XML, Perl, JavaScript, and PHP.
While in law school, Victoria was a Graduate Research Assistant for Professor John S. Dzienkowski, from The University of Texas at Austin. She was responsible for selecting cases for inclusion in the textbook International Petroleum Transactions. Victoria was particularly involved in researching the areas of international business litigation and arbitration. She also performed extensive research on political and economic risks within the context of international licensing agreements.
Having lived and studied in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S., Victoria brings a unique perspective to Karl Bayer. Right after high school, Victoria moved to Canada to study English and French. Born and raised in Mexico, she is a native Spanish speaker and a graduate of the Monterrey Institute of Technology (Instituto Tecnologico y the Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), where she concentrated in Physics and Mathematics.
Professional Activities
- American Bar Association, Young Lawyers
- American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)
- Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN)
- National Hispanic Bar Association (NHBA)
- State Bar of Texas, Intellectual Property
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