I was irritated by the very public quote in which counsel said they'd studied the 'heck' out of the matter and: "We have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favour dollars over safety."
Reason is, most executives don't make a conscious decision to 'do bad things'. I know plenty of BP folks (most of 'em in the US are American, BTW, and they don't get up in the morning saying "I'm going to foster corporate profits by endangering the lives of my fellow workers."

However, BP corporate decisions led to the Texas City 'massacre' and at least one fatal accident on the North Slope and they for sure contributed to the Offshore debacle in this instance. They are not alone, but they are not wide-eyed innocents. They played with safety margins at the very least.

Now they haven't got off scot free and I think they are entitled to seek co-payments from some of the other involved companies, but that counsel really irritated me.