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Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation

In 2010, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Caldwell directed Louisiana’s legal response and the state’s participation in the federal multidistrict litigation, MDL No. 2179, before Judge Carl Barbier of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. A state district judge granted his office investigative authority over BP in June 2010, including access to information about the spill and BP’s claims process. Governor Bobby Jindal allocated funding from a BP block grant to the attorney general’s office to support investigation and expert work.

During the structuring of MDL 2179, Caldwell objected to an initial order appointing Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange as coordinating counsel for all Gulf Coast states, stating that each state should control its own sovereign claims. On January 18, 2012, Judge Barbier issued Pretrial Order No. 48, designating Caldwell as Co-Coordinating Counsel for State Interests, which formalized Louisiana’s leadership role in the litigation.

Caldwell’s office pursued Louisiana’s claims for natural resource damages, economic losses and civil penalties under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and the Clean Water Act. He also petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit challenging MDL holdback orders that reserved a percentage of state recoveries to fund common-benefit legal fees.

In July 2015, the United States and the five Gulf Coast states announced a proposed global settlement with BP. The agreement was finalized in 2016 with the entry of a federal consent decree, which included signatures from both Governor Jindal and Caldwell. The settlement provided Louisiana with several billion dollars in natural resource restoration funding, economic damages and civil penalties distributed over multiple decades.