Banks, shippers, oil companies — not just insurers — face Katrina-related suits

Hurricane Katrina lawsuits are multiplying and it’s not just insurance companies that are defendants. Oil companies, mortgage brokers, a shipping firm and a debris removal contractor have all been sued.

One lawsuit seeks to cover all the bases. Gerald Maples, a lawyer based in New Orleans, filed a class action against all the homeowners insurers, mortgage lenders and oil companies in Mississippi. The oil companies allegedly increased global warming and produced the conditions where “a storm of the strength and size of Hurricane Katrina would inevitably form and strike the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” the complaint states.

U.S. Dist-rict Judge L.T. Senter Jr. dismissed the mortgage and insurance companies as defendants. He said the oil companies can still be defendants, but he foresaw “daunting evidentiary problems” in trying to prove the global warming claim.

Maples plans to file an amended complaint. “It will have a great deal more information and science, as well as admissions by certain oil companies,” Maples said.

In other suits,

Regions Bank was sued by a couple for allegedly failing to pay their windstorm policy out of their escrow account. They learned that their policy had been canceled in February 2005 for nonpayment.

Landsafe Flood Determination Inc. was sued by a couple contending that Landsafe failed to correctly designate their property as lying in a special flood hazard area.

Crowley Liner Services Inc. and Lloyd’s of London are being sued by Royal Beach Hotel in Gulfport, Miss. The hotel contends that Crowley breached its duty to secure its storage containers and damaged the property. Lloyd’s has allegedly failed to promptly pay for business income loss and debris removal.

Phillips & Jordan Inc. is being sued by a property owner who contends that the contractor bulldozed her property even though she had not signed a right of entry form.

Meanwhile, Silver Slipper Casino Venture is taking pre-emptive legal action by asking a federal court to limit its liability after Katrina “caused the President Casino Broadwater to be torn from its moorings and washed ashore and caused to collide with the Biloxi Beachfront Hotel.”

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