BP Rig Supervisor Robert Kaluza Found Not Guilty

The last of the federal prosecutions are finally concluding. Robert Kaluza was found not guilty of violating the federal Clean Water Act for missing indications of the blowout of the Macondo well. The accident killed 11 workers and both Kaluza and Donald Vidrine were initially charged with manslaughter, but those charges were later dropped.

Vidrine and Kaluza were not the only people charged as a result of the spill. BP employee Kurt Mix was prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he deleted text messages on this phone. Mix wasn’t involved in the accident, but was involved in trying to find ways to stop the spill. His ordeal ended last November when, after his initial conviction was overturned on appeal, he accepted a plea bargain to a misdemeanor charge for deleting the text messages without company permission.

Note that these engineers were the highest level company personnel prosecuted after the spill. No senior executives face charges.

Kurt Mix will be spoke at the 2016 Global TapRooT® Summit about his experience and the effect that it had. If you don’t think that federal prosecutions could impact your incident investigations, come hear Kurt’s story and then decide.