Hood
JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on Tuesday sued Ken Feinberg, the administrator of a fund for victims of the Gulf oil spill.
According to the Press-Register, Hood filed the lawsuit in Hinds County Chancery Court in Jackson.
Hood alleges that Feinberg, as head of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, has failed to turn over oil spill claims documents requested by the Attorney General's Office.
"Feinberg and the GCCF have continually made promises of compliance, but have failed to fully provide necessary information," Hood told the newspaper Tuesday.
"All they have managed to do is delay, deny, deceive and dissemble."
In March, Hood said he planned to put pressure on Feinberg. The month before, Hood's office served Feinberg with a subpoena asking for full access to the claims records so it could review them.
Hood says Feinberg has failed to comply with that subpoena.
The attorney general, in his lawsuit, asked the court to order Feinberg and the claims facility to fully comply with his subpoena.
Feinberg told the Mobile, Ala., newspaper in an e-mail that he has provided Hood with about 125 claims files and that his office hasn't heard back from the attorney general on the claims.
The lawsuit is scheduled to be heard by Judge Denise Street Owens at 9 a.m. Sept. 15, Hood's spokeswoman told the Press-Register.
An explosion and fire occurred on Transocean's drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, licensed to BP, on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and resulting in the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.
From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by e-mail at jessica@legalnewsline.com.