Attorneys urge AMI business owners to file spill claims
HOLMES BEACH — Assessing the indirect damage done by the BP oil spill to tourist havens like Anna Maria Island is like stopping a car crash mid-spin and filing a lawsuit, according to an attorney organizing claims against the oil giant.
“You’re still, literally, in the middle of the injury,” attorney Robert Gordon, of the New York-based law firm Weitz Luxenberg, told about 20 island business owners Tuesday morning.
That’s why, the attorneys said, merchants need experts who know how to measure business lost to perception and fear.
Attorneys from three high-powered law firms visited Holmes Beach Commission chambers to urge island business owners to make claims on the $20 billion BP has set aside for damages stemming from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
Although oil has yet to wash up on island beaches, the attorneys walked the merchants — who ranged from a water park operator to a jet ski rental owner — through the claims process.
“You can say, ‘I rely as a resource on the Gulf of Mexico,’” said attorney Brian Barr of Pensacola’s Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty & Proctor. “People have a different perspective of coming to Florida than they did prior to April 20. That’s a damage to you guys.”
The attorneys said their expert modeling studies, measuring everything from how similar events affected other communities to how much rain fell on the island last year, will quantify the loss each business suffered.
The cost of the multimillion-dollar studies can be spread among thousands of claimants, the attorneys said.
Holmes Beach City Commissioner John Monetti, the general manager of the Columbia Restaurant on St. Armands Circle, invited the attorneys to meet with the business owners. They also conducted a meeting Tuesday night at Sarasota’s Ritz-Carlton as part of a statewide effort.
Monetti encouraged the merchants to consider hiring the law firms. “I know what will come out of it if you don’t try,” Monetti said. “Nothing.”
The meeting came a day after Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by President Barack Obama to manage BP’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility, announced he was lifting a ban on awarding claims to areas outside of the immediate spill impact zone.
The move was cheered by Florida officials because it means places like Anna Maria Island that depend on tourism can seek damages even if oil didn’t wash up on their beaches.
The attorneys told the island business owners that just because their 2010 revenues may be on par with 2009 doesn’t preclude them from making a claim. That’s because 2010 was expected to be a bounce-back year after a miserable 2009. The spill thwarted the comeback, they said.
Ken Gerry, the general manager of White Sands Beach Resort on Holmes Beach, said his family-owned business has had to expend extra resources to maintain business that was almost automatic before the spill.
He said many customers who called in May to cancel their visits were scheduled to arrive in September and October.
“We did lose from this,” Gerry said, “but it’s just finding a figure is a little hard to do. We’re not doing bad. It’s just not where it should be. ... We’ve done a lot of extra marketing. That’s the other thing with this case. Even if you do show more profit, if you’re putting in 20 more hours a week and you’re putting in a couple thousand dollars a week in advertising, it’s a wash.”
The attorneys said they will work on contingency. They will collect 15 percent of an emergency claim reward, 20 percent of an award negotiated through Feinberg’s office and 25 percent of a successful lawsuit.
This story was originally published October 6, 2010 at 12:00 AM.