Louisiana Voice

Remember in yesterday’s LOUISIANA VOICE POST, I briefly touched on CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSES in lawsuit settlements?

Well, while that passing observation was in reference to an entirely separate legal issue, the matter of confidentiality clauses coincidentally surfaced today in a Bloomberg Tax story by writer Michael Bologna (no baloney).

Bloomberg Tax, like its sister service Bloomberg News, has a paywall and I’m not a subscriber so I’m unable to access the full article but essentially it says that the Louisiana Department of Revenue has “confidentially settled” a major tax lawsuit against ConocoPhillips Co. that could have meant a $700 million windfall to the state in the form of back taxes, penalties and interest due the state.

The Revenue Department refused to say if Conoco paid even one red cent in the settlement.

“Could have.” But apparently, we’ll never know because of that confidentiality clause that shields Louisiana’s taxpayers from ever knowing how much the state will receive in funds to meet a looming fiscal cliff that seems to pop up with increasing frequency these days.

Folks, don’tcha think that we, as taxpaying citizens of Louisiana, deserve to know (a) how much the state receives from these lawsuits and (b) how much the state has to pay in litigation costs assessed against it? I mean, after all, it is our money that’s being tossed around here. There should be some accountability, I would think. But hey, that’s just me.

Well, it isn’t just me. Jan Moller, executive director of the non-partisan fiscal policy think tank Invest in Louisiana, had this to say about the settlement:

“The administration should explain to the public why it walked away from a potential $700 million lawsuit. This is money Louisiana desperately needs. If the state is going to ask ordinary citizens to pay taxes, then certainly the wealthiest corporations should also pay what they owe.”

 Steven Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, added that the department should explain why it withdrew from the lawsuit. “[C]itizens will be left to speculate why potentially $390 million to $700 million was left on the table,” he said.

But hey, it ain’t our first rodeo with this song and dance.

Last December, the state and Cameron Parish agreed to a confidentiality settlement with BP, Hilcorp and Shell in a coastal damage lawsuit potentially worth up to $7 billion in damages to the state. But again, we don’t know the real value because (ahem) that little bit of information remains protected.

A joint motion filed last Dec. 8, (that was on a Friday, the day of the week most often chosen by politicians to ensure the least news coverage as both reporters and readers gear up for the weekend) by attorneys for all litigants – the three oil companies and the parish and state – created individual agreements between each of the companies and the parish and state that resolved all claims outlined in a 2016 coastal damages lawsuit. It said the protective order is needed to shield actions by both parish plaintiffs and oil company defendants in 41 other pending coastal damage lawsuits.

There you have it. The confidentiality of the agreement was need “to shield” actions in other coastal damage litigation.

It just seems to me that the interests of the state and its 4.6 million taxpaying citizens should have taken precedent over the interests of multi-billion-dollar oil and gas conglomerates. But again, that’s just me.

Again, it’s me thinking that the residents of Southwest Louisiana, where this litigation was concentrated, certainly deserved better.

It’s been four years, after all, since the area was visited on August 27, 2020, by HURRICANE LAURA with torrential winds that fell just shy of making her a Category 5 storm, but still the most severe storm to hit the state in a century and the 10^th worst in the U.S. As if that were not enough, six weeks later, Hurricane Delta, a Category 2 but still an ugly storm cut a near-identical swath through the same area hit earlier by Laura.

Recovery, even after four years, remains agonizingly slow. Damaged roofs remain covered by the infamous blue tarps, now frayed from four years’ exposure to the elements. Other houses were simply abandoned, rotting where what’s left of their skeletal remains stand.

I’m pretty sure the area could’ve used some of that potential $7 billion in damages. But again, that’s just me thinking out loud.