Barbier
Judge Carl Barbier of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana is scheduled to speak at a conference sponsored by the Louisiana Association for Justice (LAJ), formerly the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association (LTLA), on Friday at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans.
On Tuesday, a Multi-District Litigation Panel in Idaho assigned Barbier nearly 300 lawsuits filed against BP relating to the Gulf Oil disaster.
The suits have been filed by commercial fisherman, resort owners and others who claim lost revenues as a result of the millions of barrels of oil that spilled in the gulf as a result of the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.
According to the LAJ's Web site, Barbier will be speaking with federal Judge Richard Halk Sr. from the Western District of Louisiana on the subject of "Recent Developments in Maritime Law" at the LAJ's "High Stakes on the High Seas" maritime law conference.
Barbier's office confirmed that he would be speaking at the conference, but a spokesperson denied further comment.
Barbier, a federal judge since October 1998, was appointed by President Bill Clinton. He served as a plaintiff attorney in New Orleans beginning in 1971. He graduated cum laude in 1970 from the Loyola School of Law. He was a past president of the New Orleans Bar Association and the LTLA.