Lawyers Planning a Deluge of Hurricane Damage Lawsuits

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, lawyers from the region are deciding whom to sue over the catastrophe -- or rather, whom to sue first.

At least one suit was filed in the last week, and plans were being sketched out for many more. The targets include real estate agents, insurance companies and federal agencies. The potential damages being sought range from a few thousand dollars to billions of dollars.

"You're going to have substantial litigation," said Daniel Becnel Jr., a Louisiana attorney who spent last weekend interviewing hydrologists and geologists and is working on multiple suits.

Many suits will be fought by attorneys who have been displaced from their offices by hurricane damage. They and other Louisiana lawyers will be in big demand because theirs is the only U.S. state in which the legal system is based on the Napoleonic Code rather than British common law. Some of the U.S.' most successful plaintiffs' lawyers are based in the Gulf Coast region.

Becnel, well known for suing tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, is counting on million-dollar damage awards or settlements. Citing statements by the Army Corps of Engineers, he claimed that a barge tore loose from its moorings and caused the devastating levee breach on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans. He plans to sue the barge's owner and its insurance carriers. The potential beneficiaries of any award, he said, include "everyone that got flooded in that area."

Suits are also expected against the owners of facilities where the sick or elderly were allegedly abandoned. Dozens of bodies were found inside Memorial Medical Center and at St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish.

The government generally enjoys immunity against suits over actions taken as part of its regular functioning. That bars damages when officials exercised normal discretion in their decision-making, even if they blundered, said Georgetown University law professor Joseph Page.

But New Orleans residents can take legal action if the Army Corps of Engineers or other agencies failed to follow their own guidelines, he said.

Becnel and others say they plan to claim that some government agencies didn't meet their own standards.

Property owners are expected to file a spate of suits against insurance firms that deny claims by arguing, for example, that damage was caused not by high winds but by flooding, which is not covered by many policies.