Firm lawyers skillfully extracted client Dril-Quip Inc. from the gigantic civil litigation surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. The firm’s client was the only defendant to pay nothing.

Only Ware Jackson’s client avoided years of entanglement and payouts in the massive multidistrict litigation over the explosion, deaths and ecological disaster created when BP’s Gulf of Mexico Macondo well exploded.

Partners Don Jackson and Dennis Barrow represented Dril-Quip in investigations by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Chemical Safety Board and Congress. The team was able to prove that Dril-Quip’s products were not the cause of the blowout.

One of two “failure mechanisms” originally blamed by the Coast Guard was the seal assembly of Dril-Quip’s wellhead. The firm’s defense focused on the path of the Macondo blowout, proving that the seal assembly did not fail and that Dril-Quip’s products were neither defective nor a cause of the blowout.