Florida got the Earth Day festivities kicked off early with some good old-fashioned litigation.
Over the weekend, Florida joined Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in suing BP and Halliburton over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The suit, filed by State Attorney General Pam Bondi in U.S. District Court in Panama City, gets after BP for not changing the batteries on the oil rig's blowout preventer and points the proverbial finger at Halliburton for installing faulty cement barriers.
According to a statement from Bondi's office, the suit has Florida seeking punitive damages for the "misconduct that led to this environmental and economic disaster."
Florida, the suit contends, is entitled to the revenues it lost because of the spill from three years ago.
Included in the revenues lost are those from taxes in sales, corporate, cigarette, and liquor as well as other forms of revenue for the state, including rental-car surcharges, of all things.
The states involved in the suit -- including Florida -- are all part of a federal trial in New Orleans against BP and Halliburton.
The suit was filed on Saturday, which was the third anniversary of the BP oil spill. The spill killed 11 rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico and wrecked more than 1,100 miles of beaches and marshlands along the Gulf Coast.
BP has yet to respond to the suit.
Unless a tepid statement on BP's website from President John Mingé counts as a response.*
"On the third anniversary of the tragic accident in the Gulf of Mexico, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of our 11 colleagues who died and those injured."
*It doesn't.
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