New Orleans Chef Sues BP Over Damages to Restaurants Selling Gulf Seafood

Chef Susan Spicer, of Bayona restaurant in New Orleans and a judge on “Top Chef,” sued BP Plc for damages to restaurants that can’t access their customary supplies of fresh seafood from the Gulf of Mexico.

Spicer filed a proposed class action on behalf of chefs “whose occupation was destroyed and/or adversely and detrimentally affected” by the worst oil spill in U.S. history, caused by the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April.

“Much of the plaintiff’s business is based on the unique quality of Louisiana seafood, as well as the chain of delivery of that resource from the initial harvester,” said Serena Pollack, one of Bayona’s lawyers, in papers filed late yesterday in New Orleans federal court. “Because this chain of delivery cannot be maintained, plaintiff’s business has been and continues to be materially damaged.”

BP spokesman Mark Salt declined to comment on the suit.

Spicer judged a recent “Top Chef” competition on Bravo TV and is an occasional panelist on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” cooking challenge. She received the James Beard Foundation Award as best chef in the southeastern U.S. in 1993, and is a consultant for the HBO series “Treme,” about life in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Bayona, in New Orleans’s French Quarter, has earned four stars in the Mobil travel guide. The Zagat Survey has ranked Bayona among the city’s top five restaurants since 1995.

Higher Prices

Spicer’s complaint says that restaurants must pay higher prices for the dwindling supply of Gulf seafood and must also ship seafood in from other regions because of the closure of much of the Gulf to commercial fishing.

The latest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bulletin says 32.5 percent of the Gulf fishery, the nation’s second largest, is closed due to concerns over contamination from the BP oil spill.

Pollack, the lawyer, said in the filing slower tourism and convention business on the Gulf Coast because of the spill is depressing restaurant sales.

Bayona’s suit seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages from BP, which has primary liability as owner of the offshore lease, and from Transocean Ltd., which owned the drilling rig. Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Cameron International Corp., which supplied the rig’s cementing services and blowout prevention equipment, respectively, are also named in the proposed class action.

BP and the other companies involved in the spill face more than 250 lawsuits from individuals and businesses harmed by the drifting oil. Most of these are proposed class actions brought by fishing industry workers, property owners and tourism-related businesses along the Gulf Coast.

The lawsuit is Bayona Corp. v. Transocean Ltd. et al., 2:10-cv-01839, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com; Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.

• Tweet
• More
  • Business Exchange
  • Buzz up!
  • Digg
• Print
• Email