This afternoon in New Orleans, BP filed a motion asking the District Court to remove Patrick Juneau as Claims Administrator of the Court Supervised Settlement Program (CSSP) for the following reasons:
- New evidence reveals that Mr. Juneau had a disqualifying conflict of interest at the time he was appointed as Claims Administrator. He advocated for claimants as a lawyer before the GCCF in 2010 and 2011. In the beginning of 2012, he was appointed the neutral to judge claims in the CSSP.
- As a matter of law, it was his obligation to get a written waiver for this conflict. He neither sought nor received one.
- He purported to make disclosures over time that were ambiguous and incomplete, and are epitomized by his statement in August 2013 to Judge Freeh that he “didn’t have any involvement in anything in the spill [and] didn’t represent any claimants in the spill.”
- In a moment, he went from being an advocate for claimants to an adjudicator of their claims, not the “neutral” that this position requires. This calls into question Mr. Juneau’s ability to carry out his duties and creates an unacceptable appearance of bias.
- As the leader of the CSSP, he adopted positions on issues as critical as compensation protocols, documentation requirements, and release language that deviated from the settlement agreement and mirrored positions he took on behalf of his prior clients.
- In addition to this new information about his prior conduct, Mr. Juneau, who is paid more than $3.4 million a year to run the claims program, has presided over a shockingly inefficient process. Over the past two years, operational costs have totaled $1 billion -- that's $10,000 in costs for each claim that has received an eligibility notice, while hundreds of thousands more claims still remain to be examined.
- He has also demonstrated a profound lack of leadership by failing to prevent the rampant misconduct that flourished in the claims facility and ultimately led to the termination or resignation of multiple top-ranking members of his staff.
The work of the CSSP is too important and Mr. Juneau’s failures are too numerous to allow him to continue in his position. In order to restore the integrity of the claims program, the Court should replace him.